The Devil in the Details
by Worldmaker
Summary: A sorcerer seeking ultimate power attempts to raise one of the Great Old Ones, but his magicks go awry. Now the beast is on the loose among the vampires and werewolves of Anita Blake's Saint Louis.
1. The Summoning

**The Summoning**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic_

**XxxxxxX**

_**February 29, 1916**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Luther Black rode to Whitebridge Hall in a driver-less black Hansom surrey that was pulled by two black horses. Despite the popularity of the motorcar, Black considered them gauche, and had promised himself that he wouldn't buy one, or even ride in one, until he absolutely could not avoid it any longer. He was coming from a rather over-wrought production of Oscar Wilde's _Salome._ He decided to himself that the play had, unfortunately, become horribly passe. Such a pity. When it had been first published, back in 1893, it had been quite the scandalous piece, and quite exciting. Ah, well. Times changed, and with them the mores of the public.

His mode of dress, in a fine tailored Seville row suit, accompanied by finely polished leather boots with silver caps, a top hat, and a silk cravat, all accompanied by a cane with a molded silver serpent's head handle, screamed to anyone observing him that he was a man of immense wealth and refined taste. Both were true, at least for certain definitions of refinement.

As his coach rolled up the carefully tended white-cobble drive of Whitebridge Hall, he counted the apple trees lining the road in whispers. Seven of them on one side, six on one side, six on the other. He wondered about the choice. Twelve was one of the mystic numbers, but it wasn't as powerful as three, or five, seven, or thirteen. He mused that it was likely aesthetics and not a means to mystic power. It happened occasionally that even the most powerful sorcerers engaged in frivolous things for their own amusement.

Distantly, he heard a church bell sound as the 28th of February rolled over into the 29th. It was his birthday; it was the forty-first Leap Year Day he'd lived through since his birth one hundred and sixty-four years ago. As the bell tolled twelve, Black looked to the sky, only to find that the stars had reversed themselves. The Southern Cross hung visible where before Orion had stood vigilant. Before his eyes, a moving star Black knew to actually be the planet Saturn burned its way through the constellation Carina.

His coach stopped just before the doors to the manor. As Luther Black stepped down to the cobblestones, his dark eyes scanned left and right. He was looking for the next sign. As with many of his ilk, his life depended on the passing of omens. He wasn't disappointed.

As Black stood there in the drive, the wind picked up, causing his long opera cloak to flap around his legs. The air around him grew deathly cold; even colder than usual for Missouri in February. He heard a pack of dogs howling after him, coming up the drive, but when he looked no dogs were to be seen. At this he nodded, and with almost exaggerated care used a long black silk scarf to tie his top hat to his head against the force of the wind. The knot Black used was carefully positioned just under his chin. It was, naturally, a square knot: the ends of the scarf were positioned in such a way that they formed a crossroads, of a sort. In this fashion, he was hidden from the prying eyes of all other sorcerers who would oppose him this night.

With a smile that would scare small children, were they to have seen it, Black strode forward to the door and rapped on it, with three quick, single strikes, using the silver end of his cane. He waited, still being buffeted by the wind, for precisely three minutes and eighteen seconds. The moment the door was opened, the arctic winds stopped completely.

The door was opened by a tall, well-tailored Negro who looked Black in the eye when he asked, "May I help you, sir?" Black respected men who weren't afraid to look other men in the eye, because doing so was a sign of scorn, and above all, he would not be scorned. Personally, He wasn't one for all that silly 'superiority of the white race' gibberish. He'd known too many powerful wizards and spell-casters who weren't from Europe to bother with such nonsense. Though carefully examining this man revealed to Black that he wasn't entirely a man at all.

"My name is Luther Black. I've come from Paris to see your master, Mister Whitebridge, and conduct business with him."

The manservant stepped back, away from the door. The butler didn't issue a verbal invitation to enter, and that, again, raised the servant's worth in Black's estimation. He took off his hat, leaving the scarf around his neck, and handed it and his coat to butler, who took both articles silently.

"Is Mister Whitebridge in?"

Finally, the butler spoke. It was a gravelly, scratchy sound that spoke more of the grave than of a living breathing person. "The master is in his study, enjoying a brandy. Would you like one also, sir?" He turned and led Luther Black through the foyer to a curtained doorway, gesturing Black to enter.

"Yes, that would be fine. Thank you."

"Very good, sir." Black dismissed the manservant from his thoughts and entered the study.

**XxxxxxX**

Consider Michael Whitebridge. He is a pinched man in his mid-50s. Slightly overweight, as all nearly wealthy men of his time are. He stands only 5'7" tall, making him on average shorter than the average male citizen of Saint Louis. His head and face – and in truth the rest of his body – is naturally hairless due to alopecia. He has a large, prominent nose, and a ready smile, though like Luther Black's, his smile is that of a viper waiting to strike at a rat.

When he build the Manor back in 1881, the established gentry of the city dismissed him as "new money." Twenty-three years later, they dismissed him as an eccentric lunatic with a reputation for deviant sexual tastes and a propensity for importing prostitutes from Chicago and Cincinnati, and other towns nearby. Those whose ear was even closer to the ground marked him as having a taste for young boys in addition to young girls, and could repeat many rumors regarding children that Whitebridge had caused to disappear by way of murder and Satanic cruelty.

Whitebridge was an established sorcerer, a demon-worshiper, the leader of a cult of like-minded followers, and absolutely not a man you wanted to cross if you wished to continue living a long and healthy life.

Luther Black terrified him.

"Come in, Mr. Black. Its nice to see you again." Whitebridge rose from his chair in front of the study's fireplace. "Please, make yourself at home. Has Dominic offered you a brandy?"

"He has, yes. And yes, it is good to see you again, Whitebridge. How have you been keeping?" Neither man was much for small-talk, but niceties must be observed in this sort of situation. Just getting to the point would never do. Only after the comparative weather in Paris and Saint Louis, the American and French stock market, whether Alistair Crowley was really serious or just a con-artist, and the downing of a second snifter of brandy apiece was the subject of the meeting broached.

"So, Whitebridge... you said you found it?" Black's face was carefully under control to show no reaction, but his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

"I do... I do indeed." This was a grand moment for Whitebridge. He wasn't often treated as an equal by sorcerers of Black's caliber, and yet here he was. He dragged an iron lock box from under a table. After pulling a set of keys from his pocket, he opened the thing, to reveal a smooth black stone wrapped in purple silk. The stone seemed to be made of volcanic glass, and had an odd green light buried deep within it that shifted around the inside of the sphere at random.

"The Basilisk's Eye. Finally!" Luther Black extended a hand as if to touch the artifact, but was stymied when Whitebridge dropped the lid of the box closed. For a moment Black's face twisted with rage, but only for a moment. The man collected himself and straightened. "Yes, that would be what I was looking for indeed."

"So its true then?" Whitebridge looked at his companion with a gimlet eye. "You intend to attempt an Ascension?"

"I intend on doing more than attempt, my good man. When I am through I will not only be a worshiper of the Kings of Edom, I shall stand as one of them."

"Heh. Heh." Whitebridge couldn't help it. "Heheheheheheheh. Yes, well... heh... good luck with that. It will take you, what, a century? More? Ah, well... I do wish you luck."

Black bristled. "I am more than most men, and have ambitions above them." He eyed Whitebridge. "You will go ahead with your plans for a summoning?"

"I will. As you say, I'm not as ambitious as you. I do not wish to become one of the Gods of the Dark Kingdom. I will be satisfied with mere immortality and temporal power. Now, do you have my book?" He shoved the box toward Black with his toe.

Luther Black grimaced and brought a square object from under his coat. It was wrapped in black silk and tied with the same knot Black had used on his hat. "Yes, here. Enjoy." He handed it to the other man, then picked up the lock box. "And with that, I shall take my leave."

"Certainly, Mr. Black." Whitebridge waved vaguely toward the doorway, his manservant Dominic standing by. "Dominic will show you out." Whitebridge sat with his prize in his lap until he felt the traces of Luther Black's presence leave the boundaries of his household wards.

He made a sign to Dominic who left the room silently. Whitebridge caressed the silk wrapping of the book before opening the knot. The book was stained a dark red, its cover a soft, supple leather of a kind not usually seen. The face of a screaming man was embossed on the front cover, a screaming woman on the back.

"You wished to see me, sir?" In the doorway, Michael Whitebridge's only child, his ten year old son Peter, stood waiting.

The elder Whitebridge said, "We have it. The _Liber Terribilis_! It is all the Order needs to proceed. We will perform the ceremony at the next full moon. Pass the word on to Mister Sikes. Have him gather the coven. We will call down Illyria at the next full moon." Michael Whitebridge looked up at his son, who stood motionless. "And then we shall have everything we ever wanted."

**XxxxxxX**

Whitebridge slept, and his dreams were filled with images of power and glory. And death, of course, especially death. They would call down the Primordia Rex, one of the great Kings of Edom, the Dread Rulers, and he would trap it and hold it and demand that it make him ruler of the world. And all would bow to him and despair.

He woke, suddenly. Peter was there, standing over him with a candle. The boy was already dressed in his supplicants robes. "Yes? What?"

"It's midnight." Peter said in his hesitant voice. "It's time."

"Time, yes. Very good." Whitebridge rose swiftly, covering his naked body with robes of his own. Unlike his son's drab coverings, his own clothing were decorated with arcane symbols and charms befitting his station.

He motioned his son to follow him down the dark corridor and the stairway leading to the summoning room in the basement. "You know, son, no one has ever dared attempt what we are going to do tonight. What we will achieve. To summon and imprison one of the Kings... this will be my triumph. Eh, Peter?"

The boy, following behind loyally, nodded. Then he choked out, "Yes, father." when he realized a more full response was needed.

Whitebridge stopped and looked at his son. "Father!?"

"Sorry... Magus. Yes, Magus..."

Whitebridge stared at his son, then snorted in contempt. He turned to continue the walk to the summoning room. "I tell you, Peter, after tonight that vagabond bastard Black won't be making any more jokes about me. No more jokes, not once I have ultimate power in my hand."

Whitebridge swept the doubled doors to the summoning room open. There, in the center of the room, his acolytes were putting the finishing touches on the circle. Nearly twenty feet in diameter, it was framed in black paint, with arcane prayers were inscribed along its circumference. An inner ring of salt lay along the thick black circle's body, itself surrounded by a ring of blood-red wax.

Jeremiah Sikes, Whitebridge's second in the coven, stepped from the shadows. "Everything has been prepared according to the _Liber Terribilis_, Magus. We are ready for the ceremony."

Whitebridge surveyed the summoning room. "Excellent. Everyone, to your places, then. We shall begin." He waited until those thirteen members of his coven, all true believers especially chosen for this task, stepped to their appointed spots around the circle. His son, Peter, stepped back, disappearing into the shadows yet remaining close in case he was needed.

Whitebridge stepped to the podium placed at the 12 o'clock position. It held the _Liber Terribilis_, a silver dagger, a feather, a handful of other things needed for the spell. For a moment, Michael Whitebridge is terrified. This action is an affront, an insult, after all, to a being as powerful as any god. To think that he... a mortal man... could actually bind one of the Great Old Ones to his service...

For a small moment, he hesitated... he actually questioned if he really wanted to go forward with this...

But only for a moment...

"Oh Great One, I conjure thee. I give you the bone of a righteous man, washed in the blood of the Fallen. I give you the dying wish of a virgin, stolen from her grave. I give you a knife, cleansed in tears. I give you a coin spent in hatred. I give you a tooth, ripped from a wolf's jaw. I give you a feather plucked from the wings of an angel."

Without pausing from his conjuration, Whitebridge raised his hand and used the silver dagger from the podium to slash across his left palm. He clenched his wounded fist until the blood was freely flowing. "I give you blood from my own veins. And I give you a name, a name long lost."

There is feeling, like a bell tolling in the back of his mind. This body throbs with the power of the spell, and Michael Whitebridge realizes that he has gone too far. There was no way he could stop the conjuration even if he wanted to. "I call you forth with names, my Lord. I summon thee with venom and pain. I summon thee with blood and I summon thee with despair. I open the gate to thee and call thee forth. Come!"

All around him, his cultists picked up the chant. _Come! Come! Come! Come!_ Whitebridge shuddered as every candle in the room flareed to life by themselves. In the sudden burst of light he could see his son, Peter, cowering in a corner, blood dripping from the boy's ears. And still the chant, _Come! Come! Come! Come!_

"I summon thee forth in the name of the Old Lords! The Queen Beyond the Pale calls you! The Mistress of All Sorrow calls you! The Muse of Lethargy and Despair calls you! The Lord of the Scarlet Infinity calls you! The Hunter of All calls you! The Heart of Man's Dementia calls you! The King in Sapphire Robes calls you! The Chaos Irresistible calls you! The Key of Power calls you!"

A golden smoke began to rise from the center of the circle. Whitebridge's eyes widened, as this was a sign none of the old texts warned about. Not even the _Liber Terribilis_ mentioned golden smoke! But it didn't matter. It was working. The conjuration was working!

"They summon you! From the dark they call you, and into the dark they call you! Bone and wish, knife and coin and tooth. Feather and blood and name." The golden mist was congealing in the center of the circle, getting more and more solid every second. Taking a form. Taking a definite form. At last Whitebridge screamed, "Here in the darkness we summon you together! _COME!"_

He stopped, breathing hard. Harder than he breathed at the apex of sex. Harder than he breathed when terrified. Whitebridge concentrated on his breathing, all the while keeping his eyes on the form lying at the center of the circle.

The summoned form was seemingly a naked girl. A child. Long white hair that tinged gold at the ends. Skin unblemished and pale, with patches of gold at her joints, along her scalp, down her arms. She was beautiful, and seemed utterly delicate. She wasn't moving; the power of the spell had obviously driven her insensate.

"We... we did it!" Sikes stepped forward. "I don't believe it. We actually did it!"

Whitebridge finally had his breathing under control. He stared at the still form in the middle of the circle and understanding came to him.

"No. We failed. That isn't Illyria, damn it to hell. We failed." He stared at the figure some more, then shrugged. "Perhaps we can make a silk purse out of this sow's ear, eh Sikes? We still called one of the Old Ones, and we have bound it here."

"But Magus, if not Illyria... which one? Which one did we snare?" Sikes question was asked with a quaver of fear that brought a sneer to Whitebridge's lips.

"Which one? Who knows. I surely don't. That will be yours to determine, Mister Sikes." He again looked down at the unconscious being lying at the center of the summoning circle. "But not now. Now, Sikes, we need to put _that_ in the cage. Get it locked up before it wakes and slaughters us all." He stepped back from the circle. "Let us not look a gift horse in the mouth. We shall find a way to make this unfortunate mistake pay off for us in the greatest way possible."

**XxxxxxX**

_The emptiness that surrounded Creation and the ephemeral realms of spirit that enclosed it roared with the storms of base existence. Winds that were not winds, and lightning that was not lightning struck at anything and everything that dared enter the shadows beyond the light of creation. The power of the summoning echoed past the material worlds that made up true existence, into the outer darkness._

_Beyond the astral, beyond the city of Man called Babylon, beyond the Lands of Legend where myth lived, beyond the Netherworld of Hells and Punishment, beyond the Elysium of Heavenly Reward, beyond the Rings of Loezen, beyond Yggdrasil and the City-States of Yong, beyond the Mill-Works of Bromion and the Veil of the Temple, beyond Death's Dominion and the Realms of the Four Zoas, beyond even the empty, storm-wracked outer emptiness itself lay the fifth world, the Qliphothic, the Realm of Shining Darkness. The Anti-Creation._

_Titanic, teeth-like mountains jut from warped flowing plains in utter disregard to geography and gravity. Indistinct, wet _things_ writhe randomly from place to place. At random intervals, the landscape... if it can be called such... is interrupted by clusters of humanoid statues made of compacted ash. These figures would resemble huge crouching fetuses to a human eye that saw them in the split second before the realm itself tore the sanity from it. The figures are strung with slimy moss-like bodies, and horrors nest and grow in their empty eye-sockets._

_Mere mundane light explodes here, like a bomb would, causing injury to anyone foolish enough to try and use it._

_There was nothing to see In the Qliphothic Realm, for everything radiated the blackness of pure dark. No human mind could take the sight of this realm; no mere mortal being could survive exposure to it. Fearsome and immortal creatures made it their home, though you could never say that such creatures actually _lived _there..._

_The call of the spell penetrated the realm of the Qliphothic. Its power flowed across the land until it encountered the being known to the mortal men of one earthly realm as Sineya, the Great Predator, the Hunter of All, the Devourer, the Queen of Beasts, the Slayer._

_On any other day – though there was no true time in the Qliphothic and the word 'day' is only a convenience – Sineya would have ignored the spell, perhaps sending a servant or two on a mission to punish the upstart who dared think it could command the will of an Old One. But today – and again, there were no true days in the Qlipothic – it was resting. Licking its wounds after a fight with another entity, another Old One. It was hurt, and it was tired, and thus the spell ensnared it and dragged it screaming from the Shining Darkness. Sineya shot across the outer emptiness toward the Light of Creation like a dark comet._

_But..._

_Something new and unexpected was waiting in the Light. One one of the many worlds of the Malkuth, the mundane realms where humans had spread like a living plague, a summoning of an Avatar of the Hunter of All had already taken place. The power of Sineya the Slayer had long ago been mystically bonded to the soul of a mere human, who used the power to protect her native realm from monsters._

_Had the power been concentrated in the body of this mortal, this human, this insignificant flea-speck named Faith Lehane, the power of the summoning worked by Michael Whitebridge would have torn the mortal girl from her own realm and thrown it, alongside Sineya itself, into Whitebridge's summoning circle. But this did not happen._

_It did not happen because an easier target was available._

_Even more unexpected than the bonding of Sineya's power to a mortal, its power had recently, as such things were counted in the outer realms, been torn in twain, split between two separate mortals, who each used it to their own ability._

_Luckily for the mortal Faith Lehane, if such could be called luck, the soul of the other mortal, the other flea-speck, that had been bonded with the Devourer was already at its rest in one of the Elysium circles. Within easy reach of the passing Old One as it burned through the ephemeral realms to appear, suddenly and unwillingly, in the center of Michael Whitebridge's summoning circle._

**XxxxxxX**

She was cold.

She was cold, frightened, and her body ached, everywhere.

A moment ago, Buffy Summers had been warm, and safe, and secure. Everything around her had been soft and welcoming and warm and safe. She knew... she _**knew**_ that everything was just fine, and she had nothing at all to worry about. She had been in Heaven. She had been at rest. She had been at peace.

And now she wasn't.

Buffy Summers' eyes snapped open. They were wide, and horror-filled, and wet with tears, her eyes. Above her was a featureless wall of brick, oddly distorted. She stared at it for an eternity before realizing that there was nothing really to see above her.

It took all of her willpower to sit up and look around.

The room she was in was dark – she knew that it was dark, despite being able to see the length and breadth of it clearly – and distorted for some reason. It was cold, and dark, and dank, and cave-like. The walls of the room were dark brick, hung with drapings of deepest indigo.

It never occurred to her to wonder how she could still see color in such a dark room.

Three men, dressed in robes resembling those of fantasy-movie wizards, stood by a pair of closed wooden doors. The men were alert and awake, and she could see the pulse of their heartbeats in their necks and foreheads. The moment she sat up, one of the men left through the doorway.

It never occurred to her to wonder how she could see their pulses, either.

Buffy stood in one fluid motion. It wasn't her intention, but the grace with which she went from sitting to standing gave the impression of a powerful predator, a tiger perhaps, moving to its feet. She took a step toward the two men, one hand extended. Buffy opened her mouth to ask for help, only to close it again when she discovered the reason why everything in the room seemed distorted.

She was in a glass sphere. A huge hollow ball of glass. Buffy moved as much as she could within the confines of her glass prison, examining the interior of the sphere, which is how she discovered that it was sitting on a gold-colored base. There seemed to be no way into the sphere. Not even holes to let air in.

Buffy immediately began to hyperventilate. She was sure she was suffocating. The air in the sphere was close and tight, and what was worse, _it was the only air available in the sphere!_ The knowledge that her air supply had a time limit, that she only had a finite number of breaths before she could no longer breathe at all caused the sphere to close in on her. It was getting smaller, squeezing her tight.

She fell backwards, onto her behind. The glass bottom of the sphere was cold; she could feel it in the back of her thighs and in her buttocks. Suddenly realizing she was completely naked only added to the stress. Her breathing went from rapid to labored.

_**CALM**_

It wasn't a voice. It was a presence, a near overwhelming presence that originated from nowhere and everywhere all at once.. It hadn't spoken to her, it had commanded her – no, commanded was too direct. It had transmitted to her, not quite instructions. Not quite commands. Less than orders and more than requests. Advice, perhaps. Regardless of the nature of the communication, Buffy calmed. Her breathing slowed to nothing, and it took her several moments to realize she had stopped completely. The fear she had felt since waking was gone, and she was no longer cold, or hurt, or shaking. Her body no longer ached.

_Who are you? _Now that she wasn't panicked, she could feel the presence lurking in the back of her head. _What are you doing in my mind? Oh god! I'm possessed! Get out of my head! _She started to panic again.

The answer was a dark impression that somehow felt like a mix between anger and humor.

_**CALM**_

And just like that, she was calm again. It wasn't a command. It wasn't a request. It just was. And it... the presence... was almost soothing. It felt familiar somehow, like something she'd always had, lurking within her. It felt almost like...

Buffy's eyes grew wide again. _Are you the Slayer?_

There was another dark impression. Acceptance. _Of its place as part of her?_ Pride. _In her and her use of it power? _Anger. Always anger. _But if not anger at her, anger at what?_

She examined the inside of the glass cage again, only moving her eyes. In a sudden burst of motion she was standing, one fist extended in the lightning-quick punch that slammed into the glass of the sphere. The whole thing rang like a bell, making the two robed men standing by the door jump in shock. But the glass of the sphere was unmarked. No cracks, no chips. No effect on her prison at all. _What is happening?_ She thought to herself. _And how do I escape?_

_**TRAPPED**_

_**OBSERVE**_

There was a knock at the door, and one of the robed men hurried to open it. Buffy's eyes immediately went to the three men who entered. One, a boy, she dismissed immediately as unimportant. The second, a dark-skinned man in glasses, she eyed for a moment, but just a moment. It was clear that the bespectacled man was of some importance, and that she should be wary of him, but not now. It was obvious that as powerful and important as the second man was, he was only the second to the third man.

The third man radiated evil and dark magic.

_**HIM**_

Buffy was sure the presence was right. This man was the one who brought her here. He was a relatively short man. He was hairless, not even eye-lashes. And he was dressed in clothing that Buffy knew had gone out of style nearly a hundred years before she had been born. He even carried a cane, though he did not need it to walk. Not yet, anyway. The man approached the glass cage, but stopped a good foot short of it. Buffy glanced at the man's feet and suddenly became aware of the black circle painted around her cage. It was inscribed with prayers, she realized, though she could not understand how she could read the bizarre lettering. There were two other rings, one in white, made of salt – again, how she knew this she did not understand – and a red one in candle wax.

_**TRAPPED**_

_**LISTEN**_

The man leaned in, careful to not overbalance himself. "Welcome, Great One. Let me introduce myself. I am Michael Whitebridge. I am Magus of this enlightened order. And I am your new master." Buffy began to open her mouth to speak, to demand release, to threaten, when another impression from the dark presence rolled over her.

_**LISTEN**_

"As you can see, the three circles imprison you spiritually. The crystal sphere imprisons you physically. You will not be getting out unless the circle is broken and the sphere opened. The circle will not be broken, nor the sphere opened, unless I order it." The man brought his hands together and rubbed them. There was a greedy look to his eyes. "We will discuss the conditions of your release later. For now, make yourself comfortable."

_**PATIENCE**_

Buffy took a seat, her legs crossed in front of her. It didn't occur to her to be bothered by being naked and on display for the men in the room. Not anymore. She was sure the presence had something to do with it. It advised her to be patient, so she would be patient. She would be calm, and she would be patient.

_**WAIT**_

_**PATIENCE**_

_**OBSERVE**_

She realized it was good advice. She would bide her time. When the chance to escape came, she would be ready.

**XxxxxxX**

_**March 15, 1926**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

"Bugger and blast her!"

Peter Whitebridge jumped in his chair at his father's noisy entrance. Michael Whitebridge slammed the doors of his library open. Mister Sikes followed. Peter closed the book he'd been studying, but kept it in his hands. He stood attentive, awaiting his father's command.

"I know she can understand me. I know it!" The elder Whitebridge handed his cane off to Sikes. He'd actually come to need the thing in the last few years. "But does she respond? No. She doesn't say a word. Not one word in ten years! She hasn't threatened harm if not released, she hasn't vowed revenge, and she's ignored every demand and entreaty I've made to her! If the guards hadn't seen her move around, I'd swear she was a storefront mannequin!" Michael Whitebridge hadn't even noticed that Peter was standing there.

Sikes overturned a pair of crystal tumblers and poured two fingers of scotch into each. "What do you expect, Michael? We called her down out of the outer darkness against her will." He handed one glass to the elder Whitebridge and took a sip from his own. He shrugged. "She hates us."

"Of course she hates us. I know she hates us." Unlike Sikes, who was sipping his scotch, Whitebridge tossed his down in one gulp, then handed the glass back to his second for refilling. "But she doesn't act like it. She just sits there and stares at me with those creepy little eyes of hers."

Sikes nodded. "Creepy. I like that. Yeah, her eyes are creepy. Like a tiger's eyes. You don't expect eyes like that looking out at you from a girl that looks like Lilian Gish."

Peter stepped forward. "Uh, Father. Magus, I mean. I, uh, I think I found something that, uh, it might be applicable... I mean, it might make dealing with our, um, _guest_, ah, a bit easier. Its in the _Vivlio Apagorevmeni Onomata_." He opened the book he was holding and pointed to the page. "Here, sir... do you see the picture?"

"Yes?" Michael Whitebridge took a pair of glasses from his coat and put them on. "Hmm... yes. Yes, indeed. Why do you think the guards around her are so heavily armed? She was one of the Primal Spirits, I was sure of it. Of the most ancient of Old Ones. But which one? She wasn't Illyria, we knew that. Azogg-Mon, then? Ovilkan?"

He put a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder and the boy almost leaned into it. "No, it had to be Sineya. She was the only one that fit the bill. I had hoped you would work it out on your own, Peter, and you did. Well done, my son."

Whitebridge turned to Sikes and nudged his second in command. "Its good to know that the coven will be in good hands when I'm gone, isn't that right Sikes?"

Sikes barely paused, hiding his anger at being passed over in favor of his master's weakling son, merely smirked. "Certainly, Magus. Certainly."

**XxxxxxX**

_**November 24, 1936**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

"Peter." Michael Whitebridge was stooped now. At 78 years of age, he was finally accepting that he was an old, old man. He walked, carefully and slowly, along the upper gallery of his mansion. "Has there been any news of the traitor?

"No, father." Peter didn't call his father Magus anymore. Not since he had inherited the title. "There has been no sign of Mister Sikes, nor the money and artifacts he stole. The Pinkerton men I employed have found no luck, nor have the demons of the winds I sent after him."

"Demons. Bah, they are the problem. Sikes is being protected by the verminous powers." Whitebridge put the stem of his pipe between his toothless jaws and tried to light it, but the palsy in his hands was too great. He waited, expectantly, and Peter lit it for him.

"What, uh... " Peter looked down to the first floor of the mansion, where the door to the secret cellar was hidden. "What about our guest? Couldn't she find Sikes? Punish him for his transgressions?"

"Oh, absolutely. Pray tell, son, just how will you get her to do that?"

Peter looked confused. "We convince her to..."

The elder Whitebridge laughed. It was a dry, sickly sounding laugh that descended into a dry, sickly sounding cough. "In twenty years, how many things have we convinced her to do for us, Peter? How many? No. We can't 'convince' her to do anything. All we can do is keep her imprisoned, and hope that she changes her mind."

Peter followed his father toward the master bedroom and helped his father into bed. He winced at the smell of stale urine coming from the man's pajamas, but knew better than to bring it up. As he was settling his father, Peter asked, "Well... can't we try to summon Illyria again?"

"No, you idiot. No! Didn't you learn the first time? Our ceremony wasn't right. It won't ever be right. It will only summon one being, and we have her in a cage already." Whitebridge sneered. "I will be glad to finally see your mother in the hell where I sent her. I'll look at her and spit in her face, that you were the product of her womb..."

Peter watched as his father slowly drifts into sleep. For a moment he held a vision of grabbing a pillow and smothering the life out of the nasty old man in his mind. But he didn't do that. The death curses of true sorcerers are certain and lethal.

Besides, Peter knew he didn't have long to wait.

**XxxxxxX**

_**December 3, 1946**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Peter Whitebridge was no longer at all afraid of his father. He was Magus in his own right, and was a skilled sorcerer who controlled and commanded the dark forces in his own name. He was no longer the little boy who cowered behind the pillars in the summoning room. His father didn't scare him. Not at all. He would never be afraid of a crotchety old grouch who couldn't even muscle up the power for a candle-trick spell anymore.

"Father, are you sure this is a smart thing to do? It isn't safe for a man of your age to get riled up, and you know that..."

"My _age?"_ Michael Whitebridge coughed. "When did you become so insubordinate? So defiant. Open the fucking door already, Peter!"

Peter stood at the bottom of the staircase that led back up to the main hall of the house. The doors to the secret basement and the prisoner was behind him. In front of him was Michael Whitebridge. The old man was in a shoddy, food-stained bathrobe, a white sleeveless t-shirt, and a pair of pale blue boxer shorts that were stained with substances best not thought about. On either side of the old man stood the two shifters, both were-hyenas, that Peter had hired to help keep his father out of trouble. He looked at both of them, and they shrugged.

"You two are useless." Peter looked the old man in the eye. He wasn't afraid of his father, and he wasn't giving in because he was intimidated by the old coot. There wasn't any harm in it, after all, and it would keep the grouch out of his hair. "Fine. Go ahead." In his head, he thought, _Its your funeral._

Peter stood away from the doors. Michael gestured to Fredo... or was it Lincoln? Peter could never tell the two were-hyenas apart. Michael gestured to the man, whatever his name was, who opened the door. The other shifter offered an arm, and leaning on his minder, Michael Whitebridge entered the dark chamber.

The old man stormed up to the cage, waving his cane the whole time. In his anger, Michael Whitebridge never noticed that the feminine figure inside the dust-covered glass sphere moved only her eyes. They snapped downward, watching his feet, and when they saw the man stop well-clear of the protective circle, they snapped back up to stare at nothing.

"You! This is all your fault, damn you to hell! All your fault!" Whitebridge raised his cane to point at the thing inside the glass. "You haven't aged a day since we caught you. Not one day in thirty years! And look at me! _LOOK AT ME!"_ The old man screamed at the girl in the ball. Tears began to flow from his eyes. "You could have been free from this prison. All you had to do was cooperate. You could have given me endless power. Immortality."

"But I got old..." Michael Whitebridge was crying openly now. "Why did I have to get so –_snrk_!" Michael Whitebridge clutched at his chest with one hand. The other flung itself outward like a claw. Peter and the minders and Peter rushed forward to help, to keep the man from falling, but it was too late.

Michael Whitebridge was dead.

**XxxxxxX**

Buffy watched her captor's fatal heart attack with a blank expression. She'd watched the man grow old and die without changing her position or even her expression. She thought that when the time came she would revel in the death of the sorcerer who had her trapped, but it was empty. A hollow victory. She was, after all, still in the prison.

_**PATIENCE**_

**XxxxxxX**

_**January 22, 1956**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

"Peter, sweetheart, I have to ask, why in the hell are you still keeping that thing down in the basement? Why?"

In the ten years since his father's death, Peter had changed the entire look of the house. Gone were the mysterious and creepy statues, the bear-skin rugs, the mythical paintings. The black-on-red wallpaper was history, replaced with soft pastels. He had made the house his own.

Except for the hidden basement. Peter had left that room alone.

"Hmm? What did you say, Adam?" He turned to his lover, smiling. The other large change in the house. With his father gone, he had no more reason to hide Adam's existence, and had moved the younger man into the house to live with him.

"I asked why you still kept that girl down there."

"What do you expect me to do with her, Adam? Seriously? I can't just let her go." Peter leaned back on his desk and crossed his arms. "She'd slaughter us all."

"But... but what if someone finds out? What about the police? If they were to find her down there, they'd have you up on kidnapping! That's a federal charge! The FBI would get involved!" Adam lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Sorry, love, but I don't think you're up to living in prison."

"Adam, don't be absurd. Please." Peter turned to the desk and began rearranging the papers. They didn't need it, but he was uncomfortable with the subject. "She's been down there for forty years now. In all that time, she hasn't had a bite to eat. She hasn't slept a wink. Hell, I don't think she's even breathing, assuming she can breathe at all in that damned fish tank. She's got to have used up all the air by now."

"But..." Adam began.

"Look, darling, its like this: she's not really a teenage girl. She's a being of unspeakable evil and limitless power. What am I supposed to do, just open the door and say, 'Hey, sorry about that, it was all my father's idea, you know? So I'll let you go and you don't strip the flesh from my bones and we'll call it even, right?'" Peter stepped close to Adam and took the younger man in his arms. "Look, I know you don't believe in all of it, but let me tell you, the Order was more than just a way for my father to make a lot of money. Some of it was for real."

Peter kissed Adam lightly on the lips. "For that matter some of it still is. I've seen shit that you would never believe in a thousand years. Things that are still giving me nightmares decades later. Trust me, we're safer just leaving her down there. She can't get out on her own, and we'll both be long gone by the time anyone else finds her and lets her out. She'll be someone else's problem by then. Okay?"

"If you say so." Adam returned the kiss. "So... what do you think? Trattoria? Get some Italian food?"

"That sounds perfect. Let me grab my coat."

**XxxxxxX**

_**July 13, 1966**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Buffy – after fifty years, she still thought of herself as Buffy – no longer questioned why she didn't age, just as she no longer questioned her lack of breathing, or eating, or sleeping. She no longer questioned why her skin had golden-yellow patches. She knew. Whatever had brought her here, whatever had torn her free of Heaven had made the Slayer in her more prominent, and as a result, she was no longer sure she qualified as a human being. But she also no longer questioned whether she was human. It was enough that she still remembered her name, and thought of herself as Buffy.

She stared at the door, unblinking, barely noticing the guards anymore. Buffy had studied the men guarding her over the years, and these, she admitted, were the least impressive so far. The mystic robes of the Coven were long gone. Now they dressed like hippies and smelled vaguely of sweat and sex and dirt and chemicals. These guards lounged around rather than standing vigilant. Some even had the temerity to stand guard while obviously high on something. Buffy still kept careful watch to see if any of them broke the circle, but none of them did. Drug-users they might be, but they weren't overly careless.

They still smelled of hyena. Shifters. Had to have been shifters. The Slayer was the Queen of Beasts, and Buffy knew her own when she smelled them. She remembered back, when the younger Whitebridge had first begun to employ weres as guards, trying to mentally dominate them so that they would release her. According to the presence, it should have been child's play. But the circle blocked her power there, too.

Buffy could hear the tap-tap tap-tap of her captor's cane against the brick floor as he approached the wooden double doors. The boy she had seen come in with her original jailer was now an old man. His hair, once auburn and full-bodied, was now mostly gray and thinning. He walked with a limp, the remnant of some accident or misadventure. Buffy watched as he pulled up a folding chair to sit down. As they always did when someone approached, her eyes flicked downward. The circle was unmarred still. That was all right. If the last fifty years of captivity had taught Buffy nothing else, it had taught her patience. Endless patience.

She watched the old man without moving her eyes, and imagined what his heart might taste like, eaten raw and warm right from his torn and open chest. That was something else Buffy no longer questioned. Where once she might refuse to kill a mortal human, fifty years of having the Slayer as a greater presence in her head had altered Buffy's acceptance of violence against humanity.

"Hello." Her jailer said. "How are... herm. Yes, I suppose that's a stupid question to ask. Sorry"

Buffy didn't react. She hadn't reacted in fifty years.

"You know, you don't need to be in there. You don't. You can leave at any time. The same deal applies. I mean, the one my father offered you, back when you were first summoned." He leaned back in his chair and tapped his cane against his leg. Buffy's eyes flicked downward again, then back up. She could tell the man was getting careless. The presence in her head had assured her that someone would do so, eventually. Sooner or later, the circle would be broken.

He was still talking, but she wasn't paying attention. Not really. Buffy had heard it all before. "Power, immortality, and a binding promise that you won't seek revenge. That's all you need to give me, and you'll be freed."

Buffy kept her silence. Her captor limped away, disappointed.

**XxxxxxX**

_**July 13, 1966**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Peter was surprised that they still came to him for enlightenment. His new 'acolytes', and he laughs when he thinks of them that way, aren't interested in magic so much as they are interested in expanding their consciousness. So he teaches them about Kundalini Yoga, and Tantric Sex, and Altered States. Nothing too important.

He forbids his followers to use psychedelic drugs, at least at his house. He's too afraid of what might happen if one of them is on guard duty and starts freaking out over a rogue hallucination. But those assigned to guard the basement are supplied with as much coffee and amphetamines as they request, to keep them alert.

He's turned over the business end of the organization to Adam, who he was now often seen with publicly. Adam still didn't believe in magic. He saw the Coven as a way to efficiently separate the amazingly gullible and stupid from their hard-earned cash. And it worked. They haven't had this much money rolling in since the 1920s.

While it is never a good time to be a gay man in the United States, the hippy movement and free love gave them a cover that lets the two of them move openly for the first time since their relationship began. Peter was head-over-heels with Adam, and Adam was just as much in love with Peter. If it weren't for certain secrets the two shared amongst themselves, it would have been a perfect relationship.

In his copious spare time, Peter wrote a book about his father, correcting certain rumors about the man, and carefully _not_ correcting certain other rumors. It sold well, for a time, and then was forgotten.

Peter himself gave up practicing true magic. He no longer associated with it, used it, or even read about it. His were-hyena hirelings were all gone now. They had been giving him the heebie-jeebies and made his skin crawl.

There was one exception, of course. He couldn't help himself. At least once a day Peter would spend some time in his father's old library, staring at a single page in the _Vivlio Apagorevmeni Onomata._

Just a single page that he had long-since memorized.

And still the creature in the basement was silent.

**XxxxxxX**

_**September 2, 1976**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

"Why won't you talk to me? You could – you could teach me! You could tell me so many amazing things! I want to learn from you!" Peter sat in his wheelchair in front of the glass globe. It had a covering of dust and dirt over most of its surface, and he could barely see the girl.

The crystal cage could not be cleaned, after all, without breaking the circle.

"You know, I haven't had a good night's sleep in years. Not since the 40s, at least." Peter waved an arm at the sphere. "I bet that's your fault. You've... you've managed to penetrate the circle with your mind somehow and are giving me nightmares." He sat silent for a moment, then whispered, "... nightmares..."

Adam put a hand on Peter's shoulder, but the older man shrugged it off. "I could, uh, I could have you tortured, you know! Don't think I don't know how! I've done it before! I've _killed people_ before! It would be easy!"

"Peter, calm down. Its not good for your heart." Adam again laid his hand on Peter's shoulder. Peter looked up into his lover's face and nodded. The last thing he wanted to do was go out like his father had.

He turned back to the glass sphere. "I hate you. I do. I'm glad we trapped you. You... you're nothing. You're insignificant. You're powerless. Just a funny-colored, naked girl trapped in a fish-tank. That's nothing at all. You're nothing at all." He seemed to run out of breath. "You're nothing at all," he whispered one last time.

Peter stared at the girl in the glass bubble, her image dimmed by the dirt and dust. She still sat unmoving.

"Ah, this is pointless. Adam, take me back up to my office. I have work to do." Peter's face smoothed over. "I do have work to do, right?" Sometimes he lost track of things from day to day.

"Of course you do, love. Of course you do." Adam spun the wheelchair in place and the pair exited the door, heading for the elevator they had secretly installed when walking stairs had become too much for Peter to handle.

"Don't humor me, Adam. I hate it when you humor me."

**XxxxxxX**

For the first time in sixty years, Buffy wasn't staring at the door. She wasn't watching the lover push the old man in the chair out of the door. She was, instead, staring at the circle. She was staring at the streak of muck left behind by the wheelchair's tire. The scattered grains of salt. The broken wax.

_**SOON**_

For the first time in sixty years, Buffy smiled.

**XxxxxxX**

_**March 30, 1980**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

The guards are gone. They'd been gone for little more than an hour. Two of them had been on duty when a third entered the room, spoke to them in whispers Buffy hadn't been able to hear, and the three of them left.

As usual, Buffy heard the man approach before she saw him enter. It was the lover, and he wasn't with the old man.

"I, uh, I don't know why I'm doing this, but I thought it only fair to tell you. Peter died four days ago. Natural, um, natural causes. Died in his sleep." The man seemed to collapse on himself for a moment, and had Buffy not been held in a glass cage for sixty-four years, she might have held some sympathy for him. As it was, she still wanted to tear his throat out with her teeth.

"I, uh... I'm not going to open the cage. Peter gave me so many warnings about it over the years that I find myself terrified of the thought. Terrified of you... So... I'm sorry." He hung his head, as if he was ashamed of what he was doing. Again, Buffy was less than sympathetic.

"Peter left everything he owned to me in his –" The man stopped talking abruptly and swallowed, obviously fighting back tears. He took a deep breath. "So I guess you're mine now. But I don't want you. I'm... I'm moving away. Far away. Hopefully far enough away that you'd never find me if you ever escape." He sighed. "And I've updated my own will. The land and the house will stay in state as is until I die. I'm not going to be living here, nor will I rent the place, or sell it. No one is going to take care of it. The place will just sit here, falling apart. It'll only be sold when I'm gone."

Buffy watched him take another deep breath, obviously trying to center himself. "Once I'm gone, the house and the land will be sold off. Who knows. Maybe whoever buys the place will open the cage. Or break it. But I'm not..." She watched as the man knelt, his words trailing off to nothing. He stared at the circle. At the smudged black paint and the scattered salt and the broken red wax.

The man looked up from where he was kneeling, his face mere inches from the glass, and Buffy was suddenly there, staring into his eyes. Her smile was predatory, the smile a cat might have when it has cornered a mouse. The smile of a panther leaping onto the back of an antelope. Her nose is all but pressed against the glass. Buffy could not help it. She stared into his eyes and forced the fact that he was her prey into his mind. She filled his consciousness with images of her tearing his heart out with her teeth and eating it slowly. Of licking his blood from her hands. She widened her smile, showing all the points, all the fangs, and the sharp meat-eater teeth. And then she licked the glass.

"Holy fuck! Holy fuck!" He scrambled backward on his ass, terrified by what he just saw, but in a blink of an eye she was right back where she had been sitting motionless since 1916, staring blankly into space, reacting to nothing.

The man was trembling. Breathing so quickly he was in danger of hyperventilating. A vague smell of urine filled the air in the room.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

She watched the lover pick himself off the floor and force himself to calm down. The man took one last look at her, and then ran out of the room in terror.

_**PATIENCE**_

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 7, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Buffy had lost track of time. She wasn't all that worried, as it had happened before. But before when it happened, there had been the guards and the jailers, whose appearance changed over time. The men had grown older, the clothing styles grew closer and closer to what she thought of as 'normal' and 'modern.' Now, though, there was no way to tell how much time had passed.

She sat in the dark, and planned her revenge upon the world. Intellectually, she knew that given what the lover had told her, there was almost no chance of striking back at the Magus, his son, or the lover himself. But, and this she promised herself, once she escaped it would be the last time anyone put her in any sort of cage. She'd carve her way through entire populations before she let that happen again.

But Buffy made many plans for when she was out of the cage. Plans involving ice cream, and shoe shopping, and maybe finding a job. Plans involving relearning how to act human; how to breathe despite not needing to. How to eat again, how to sleep again, how to talk again. How to fuck and walk and sneeze and shit and puke again. How to be with people without seeing them as victims or opponents. The entirety of the human experience, she wanted it back.

She doubted she was a Slayer anymore – other than being the ultimate embodiment of _the _Slayer, that is; she'd been tied to the entity in the back of her head long enough to learn certain things about it – but Buffy knew that she likely wouldn't completely give up the lifestyle. She hoped to find a place in the world for herself despite the physical and mental changes she'd been forced to undergo. Buffy hoped beyond hope that her friends were still there when she went looking for them. She missed her friends.

Buffy missed her mommy the most, though. She missed her mommy something awful. And she hoped that her mommy could accept that she wasn't human anymore.

_**QUIET**_

Instantly Buffy cleared her mind of all of her plans, all her thoughts, all her reminiscences. She waited, knowing the presence would...

_**LISTEN**_

It was the sound of machinery. It was muffled, but not distant. Something was moving above her. Something large, powered by an engine. As she continued to listen, she could hear wood creaking and smashing and tearing. _Someone is tearing down the house, _she thought to herself.

_**YES**_

_**PREPARE**_

Buffy stood, staring at the brick ceiling through the distortion of the glass. Plaster and mortar were falling onto the sphere, loosened by the activity above her. If she still breathed, Buffy knew she'd be holding it. More plaster rained down. There was a scraping sound from above her, accompanied by a growl from the engine-driven whatever it was.

Abruptly, there was a rain of loose bricks as a hole opened in the ceiling. First one, then eight, then two dozen. For a moment Buffy's hopes soared, but it was for naught. The bricks bounced off of the crystal shell, making it ring like a gong but not causing any damage.

From above came voices.

"_... what the hell was that ringing... sounded like a bell... move the backhoe off... think we've got another cellar... not on the plans... its there all right... hey, I think I found... get the inspector over here, pronto... look, its a staircase... "_

Buffy knew that the time had come. She leaned on the glass. She pounded on it. Her need to be out of the cage made her press against it, but she still couldn't get through. Her efforts were useless.

Buffy's head snapped up and she looked toward the door. She heard voices, at least two, maybe three men. The people with the engine had discovered the hidden stairway. They'd find her any moment.

_**CHANGE**_

_What? Change? Change what?_ She couldn't figure out what the presence wanted. She crawled toward the door, suddenly desperate to escape.

_**CAMOUFLAGE**_

And suddenly Buffy knew what it meant. She took a calming breath and willed herself to change. Her hair took on a normal blonde color, and grew shaggy and unkempt. Her eyes grew round instead of cat-like oval. Her fangs retracted. Buffy concentrated and the gold patches were replaced by cuts, bruises, and scratches. She was suddenly smudged with dirt and grime. Buffy collapsed in a heap just at the men opened the doors. Feigning weakness, she flapped her hand against the glass spasmodically.

"What the fuck is this?" The first voice, deep and husky.

The second voice. Still male. Higher pitched than the first. "I dunno, but its not on the plans."

Buffy felt something touch the glass; there was a quaver, a vibration in the crystal, as if something was rubbing it. "Oh shit! There's a girl in there! Get... get something... we need to get her out of there! Look at her! I think she's hurt!" The first voice was almost to panic mode. Buffy kept her eyes closed, but heard a frenetic repeated impact on the glass. "Hey, hey you, girl! You okay? Hang on! We're getting you out!"

"Rick, step back! Get back!" A third voice. Deeper than the second, lighter than the first. Buffy heard something impact the crystal. Something heavy. She could feel the glass vibrate beneath her, and heard the thing crack.

The second voice sounded again, but from far away. "... there's a girl down trapped here, god damn it! Call an ambulance... call the fucking ambulance, now!"

There was another impact, and a third, and a fourth. On the fourth the cracking sound turned into the sound of glass shattering. Buffy kept her eyes closed and didn't move. She could hear the men moving around. "Watch the glass! Watch the glass." She could hear the shattered crystal swept away, then two large, warm hands grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Watch it. Don't cut her on the edge there. Careful!" Buffy was pulled, slowly, inch by inch, out of the glass bubble and into the arms of one of the men. She still hadn't opened her eyes, but Buffy could feel his warmth. he could hear his heart beat. And most importantly, she could smell him. He smelled delightful. He smelled like... like smoky barbecue and cherries and chocolate. He smelled like a meal.

She shook her head at the thought, and instinctively put one arm over the man's shoulder. Buffy opened her eyes, slowly, and looked up at her rescuer. He was a huge man, and her first impression was that she'd seen him in a movie once, acting belligerent and getting his ass kicked by John Claude Van Damme or Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He had long blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail, and a goatee the same color.

"Help me," she whispered.

He looked down at her and nodded. The man shifted his grip on her until she was being held in the bridal carry. "Don't worry, little girl, we'll help you. Don, gimme your shirt. Cover her up so nobody sees her like this. She don't need nobody gawkin' at her, hurt and all."

Buffy closed her eyes and played the weakling. She'd allow these men to play the hero and rescue the little girl. It would be easier to escape from the ambulance, anyway.

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime noir stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Pendleton Legacy_ by August Derleth is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second:** This chapter was molded after and is an homage to "Sleep of the Just", the first issue of _The Sandman_, a comic book written by author Neil Gaiman and published in 1988. I created this homage with the full knowledge and consent of Mr. Gaiman, who after reading the rough draft thought that I was off to a brilliant start and made me promise to send him a copy of the finished story.


	2. The Nameless Other

**The Nameless Other**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Since there are always those who would burn those who they perceive as witches, many true magicians adopted new garb, avoiding recognition by disguising their plumage. Often the best hiding place is in plain view." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**December 21, 1918**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_Luther Black smiled at the young woman in the very slinky red dress; her elbow-length gloves and opera mask matched the color of her dress She was the mistress of a local Senator, no older than seventeen and probably rescued from her daddy's farm and sent to accompany the State Senator in his duties as a 'secretary'. Inwardly, he grimaced at all the ostrich feathers attached to her simply pillbox hat; women of this decade had no style at all. He'd be hard-pressed to remember her name, but that was true of pretty much all of his 'guests'. He held his tongue at her inane prattle, instead merely giving the appropriately timed noises of affirmation. A few repetitions of 'really' and 'yes' and 'I understand' and he was quite able to slip through the so-called 'conversation' with the bibbling quim easily and with minimal fuss._

_The cream of the crop of Chicago's elite were here at his party on this, the longest night of the year. He needed the extra hours of darkness to accomplish his goals. The blasphemous events that would occur this night would set the course of the rest of his life, and would determine the fate of the world itself._

_This masquerade party was a cover for the first official meeting of the Novus Ordo Magorum et Aeternorum Ducum, a trendy secret society to which only the best and brightest, not to mention richest, of New York's society were invited. Mystic societies and occult brotherhoods were all the rage. Each claimed to have some secret knowledge of the ancients, and each were busily relieving the credulous and the gullible of their hard-won wealth._

"_If you'll excuse me, my dear, I simply must go and greet the Governor. He was kind enough to attend, and I would be a poor host if I didn't have a chat with him." He patted the vacuous cow on the arm and gave her his warmest smile. The enchantment that he imparted to her at his touch, child's play really, would mean he'd have at least some entertainment after the party was over._

_Black extended a hand as he approached the Honorable Frank Orren Lowden. "Governor, so glad you could attend. I know you're not long in the city, so I simply had to have you at my party." The chance to ensnare one of the most politically powerful men in the state was too much for the sorcerer to resist._

_Normally, Luther Black disdained the showy nonsense of these mystic secret societies. They were pale imitations of the Covenant of the Fanged Moon, the mystic brotherhood that had once held his loyalty. It was nothing knew. Throughout history, the power of the Covenant had ebbed and surged, rippling through humanity on both a conscious and subconscious level. Such ripples inspired cheap copies of the real thing. But these copies were nothing more than monkeys imitating the actions of their owners. Despite this, they were gaining popularity among the wealthy and the elite._

_And Luther Black could turn this to his own advantage. He started his own mystic order and gave it a name that would appeal to these arrogant idiots who now surrounded them: the New Order of Magi and Eternal Rulers. He would drain these wealthy morons dry and use their money to fund his true goal: gaining the power of the Kings of Edom._

_Of course, if he happened to find a true diamond in the rough among the wastes-of-breath that the New Order attracted, someone who showed a true talent for magic, and a true talent for evil, Black would happily recruit that person as an acolyte of the shining darkness._

_Waste not, want not, after all._

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 7, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

They all heard it. All of them.

Throughout the city, like the tolling of a great bell, a sound that was not sound rang out. It covered the lycanthropic population of Saint Louis like a great blanket. Alphas, Betas, and Gammas. Even those whose beasts were solitary and followed no leaders. As one, they turned toward the source of the sound that was not a sound. No matter what they were doing. If they were working, they paused in their labor. If they were sleeping, they awoke.

No matter who they were, or what they were doing, they turned toward the source of the sound that was not sound and listened. Not for very long. Not for very long at all. Just long enough to notice that they were hearing something they were not hearing.

It was a call, a voice that spoke of something basic in their being. Something hidden, yet not hidden, that seemed to finally be distributed after being horded away for so long. A voice to be trusted. A voice to be listened to. The voice didn't say anything. It was merely sounding from the deep, as if alerting everyone to it being there.

And after this long moment of listening, the voice quieted. All of the lycanthropes returned to what they were doing as if they had never been interrupted. All of them carried the memory of the sound that they did not hear, but none of them thought about it. It was ephemeral, as if a phantasm that could be ignored.

Not that they ignored it. They merely dismissed it, storing it in their subconscious until it was time to bring it forth again.

Their actions, of course, did not go unnoticed.

**XxxxxxX**

"Wow. Of all the ties I've ever seen you wear, Zerbrowski, I've got to say, that one's one of a kind." Anita Blake looked the man up and down. Rumpled suit in a light tan, yellow shirt, and a tie that was eye-blazingly busy. It actually took her a few moments to realize that the tie was actually printed with Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

"Better gird those pretty loins of yours, Anita. This one is a weird one." Detective Zerbrowski ignored the comments regarding his fashion sense and leered at the animator-cum-vampire executioner-cum-mystic consultant as she walked into the wreckage of the house. "Here, they're going to yell at you if you don't put this on." He handed her an orange hard-hat, then tapped the one he was wearing.

"You're kidding, right?" She looked at the hat, then looked around. "There's no ceiling. This building doesn't have a fucking ceiling. And I have to wear a hard-hat? What's supposed to fall on my head? Sunlight?"

"Yep. Sucks, doesn't it?" He shrugged, and in doing so actually managed to uncrimple the shoulder of his suit. "Come on. You're going to love this."

"Doubt it. My weird shit quota for the day's already been filled. Did you hear what happened with the shifters this morning?" Blake put the hard-hat on and followed him.

"Heard something happened, but since nobody got hurt, nobody called us, and if no one calls us about it, I generally let it slide." Zerbrowski chuckled. "Keeps the workplace stress down."

"Sure it does. Sure. So what's the situation here?" She followed him over to the exposed staircase. Beside it was a square hole in the floor. "And what the hell's up with the hole?"

"Elevator. Old style elevator. Like the kind they used in tenements in the 30s. The car's locked at the bottom. We'll take the stairs." He waved her forward, about as gentlemanly as he could get. "Apparently they were built into the walls and were then disguised so no one knew they were there."

"A hidden staircase and a secret elevator. Where do they lead?"

"A hidden cellar. You'll love it." Zerbrowski gave her a grinning leer, taking a moment while they were in relative close quarters to look down the front of her shirt.

Blake rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything. By now she was used to the detective's antics. "You were telling me the situation?"

"Yeah, spoil the fun. The crew tearing down the house started the job today. They were supposed to take it down to the foundation, seal up any cellars the building had, then start reinforcing and widening the foundation. They're putting in a SaveLots." Anita grimaced. She hated the big box stores. For that matter, so did Jean-Claude She wondered how it was that anyone got the permits to build one of those monstrosities in Saint Louis if the Master of the City objected.

"Anyway," Zerbrowski continued. "They had three backhoes rampaging through the place when one of them broke through into a hidden cellar. Another uncovered the stairway down. They Crew Chief pulled the heavy machinery out of the way and sent three guys downstairs to see what they might have to deal with, and they discovered a girl in a bubble."

"A girl? In a bubble? What do you mean by -" She stopped speaking the moment she saw the remains of the crystal sphere. Most of it was whole, but one side was shattered, opening the interior to the air. It sat on a ring of some kind of reddish wood that had been inscribed with a myriad of mystic symbols, and hose feet were carved into the paws of a dragon. "Ah, right. Bubble. They found a girl in this thing? Where's she now?"

"Yeah. She's on her way to Mercy." Zerbrowski shook his head. "Real bad case. She was cut up and beat up something awful. Could barely move when the construction guys found her. They had to smash the glass with some crowbars to get her out. One of us will likely drop by later on once, you know, the doctors are done with her. Tammy there guessed she was being used as a sacrifice for something nasty."

Tammy Reynolds, RPIT's active duty witch, was crouching inside the glass bubble. She was moving her hands along the glass with her eyes closed. Beside the big glass bubble stood Detective Storr, the commander of the RPIT team. Anita Blake stepped up next to him, still watching Detective Reynolds move inside the glass ball.

"Blake. Nice of you to join us. I hate this mystic hoo-doo shit."

"Yeah, me too." Storr rolled his eyes at that. Everyone knew Anita Blake was hip-deep in the 'mystic hoo-doo shit' and loved it. "So, uh... maybe I missed something, but how did the girl get in the glass ball? I don't see any openings except for that one." Blake pointed to the area now missing due to the efforts of the construction workers.

"You noticed that too?" Tammy Reynolds opened her eyes and stood. "Okay, from what I can tell the glass was enchanted to keep things in, not keep things out. From the inside, you could probably have set off a nuke and not scratched it." She rapped her knuckles on the crystal. "This thing's old. Like close to a century. Its been sitting her since the thirties at least. Maybe the twenties."

Reynolds crawled out of the bubble, careful to avoid the sharp edges. "I have to say this thing is getting to me. It feels... off. And I don't mean the usual demon-infested chilblain make your brain try to turn itself off thing. I mean, there's something about this entire place that simply offends my sense of reality and my basic sense of magic is making me want to run screaming."

"What is this place, anyway?" Anita looked around at the wreckage. Now that it had been exposed to the light of day, the hidden cellar looked fairly harmless, except for the big broken glass ball. There was a menacing feeling coming from it that spoke to her senses. All of her senses. It was tweaking her necromantic power, the power she shared with Jean-Claude, and most especially her links to the wolves and the leopards. The power she felt through the links to her weres was sitting up and howling at the hidden moon.

"Its the old Whitebridge house," Zerbrowski said. From his tone, he obviously thought that would explain everything.

"And that means?"

"Right. Forgot you're not originally from here." Zerbrowski took a deep breath. "There was this guy, name of Michael Whitebridge. Rumor has it he was into demons and magic and weird sex. Its a bit of a local legend around here. I'm surprised your vampire buddies haven't told you."

"No. None of them have told me anything." Anita thought about it. "In fact, the only time I remember anyone mentioning anything to do with a Whitebridge was some discussion about... ah. Okay, that makes sense."

All the cops had an inquisitive look on their face.

"Jean-Claude was once looking into acquiring a property to raise horses. You know, as a business investment. Someone mentioned that it was too bad the Whitebridge estate had been bought by some store chain." Anita shook her head and almost laughed. "He said he'd be more willing to walk into the sunlight naked than come within a mile of the Whitebridge property."

"Well, you're looking at it. This is the Whitebridge property. According to the stories, back before about 1950 when his son took over, there were regular orgies and drug parties going on here. Supposedly a lot of black magic." Reynolds shuddered. "I can tell you now that we've found evidence that the black magic part was true."

"What happened after 1950?"

"Old Man Whitebridge died. His son took over. You know how it goes." Dolph Storr muttered. "This house has been empty for close to a decade and a half, since Whitebridge Junior died, I guess. That would explain why someone snuck in and put their devil-worship stuff here. No one would notice if they did it in an abandoned house."

"You're wrong about that, Dolph. This isn't new stuff someone brought in. From the looks of it, this stuff's been here for, I dunno... sixty? Seventy years maybe? This isn't new. And its intricate. Someone took a lot of time and effort putting this fish-tank together." Reynolds circled it. "From a strictly magical standpoint, its almost a work of art."

"Jesus, look at this..." Blake crouched to look at the base the globe was sitting on. "You've got the standard assortment of hermetic sigils for containment here, plus magical strengthening, plus more containment. This amount of protective containment is simply insane."

Reynolds was nodding. "You got that right. Have you seen the protective circle? Its not one of the seven variations on the Seal of Solomon. In fact, I think it might be the Seal of Danzalthar. And they backed it up with a Witches Collar made of blood-laced wax and an inner circle of salt. They _really _didn't want what was in there to get out."

"You make it sound like they were trying to hold a Tyrannosaurus Rex in that bubble." Dolph snorted.

Tammy Reynolds shrugged. "Could have been. The demonic equivalent. Though the interior residue doesn't feel strictly demonic. Its weird. Something that I've never seen before. Its like, demonic, but not demonic. Like almost demonic. No, that's not it. Not quite. Its like. Shit, I have no idea. Old? Evil? Other. That's what I felt. Some nameless... other." Reynolds rubbed her own arms, like she was suddenly cold. Gives me the shakes just thinking about it."

Anita Blake's face fell. "Wait, you mean you felt this demonic taint on the inside of the glass?"

"Sort of. It was not quite demonic, but definitely something dark. Something hostile. Pretty strong, too, like whatever was in here had..." Reynolds got it, suddenly. Here eyes got really large. "Shit. Dolph, we got a problem. Someone needs to track down the ambulance that girl was taken away in."

"What?" The leader of the RPIT team pushed himself away from the wall. "Why?"

Blake had already pulled her cellphone and was swiftly punching numbers. She had to let Richard know so he could warn his people what sort of creature was crawling around town, and the contact Jean-Claude so that the vampires were on alert. Anita cursed the fact that Jean-Claude way lying dead in his coffin. "Because that girl wasn't a girl, Dolph!"

"What was she then?"

"A demon!"

**XxxxxxX**

"Whitebridge. Bien sur. It would be Whitebridge, naturellement." Jean-Claude threw the handful of photographs of the hidden cellar onto the table. "That man was a menace when he was alive, and even now, sixty years after he est decede, he continues to bring trouble to my city." The Master of the City looked to his Human Servant. "So it is truly a demon, then?"

"It almost has to be. Given what we saw? I mean, look at the thing." Anita Blake pointed to the pictures. "That glass bubble is a fucking demon cage, and a strong one. Some time in the past, Michael Whitebridge, or his son, or one of his people summoned up a demon and kept it hidden in the basement for years. At least fifteen or sixteen years, maybe longer. Could have been a lot longer." She turned to Jean-Claude. "When did you say he built that house?"

"Je ne connais pas la reponse a cette question , precisement ma petite." The vampire shook his head. He spoke in French out of habit, not really thinking about it. It was a sign of just how stressed he was. "Apologies. I don't know, really. It was already built when I came to Saint Louis in 1909."

"Didn't you tell me you'd been in America since since 1815?"

"Oui, mon raton du roi. But prior to 1909 I was in New York City, or Philadelphia, or Boston." The master vampire shrugged. "I even dwelt in several cities in Georgia before arriving in my city."

"Ah." Rafael nodded. "Sorry, I misunderstood." The rat-king was quiet. "So this thing could have been sitting in the basement of the Whitebridge house since the turn of the 20th Century or even earlier. What would be the point of that? I mean, why trap it?"

"Power, what else?" Asher answered.

"But wouldn't you, like, have to let the thing out of its jail cell for it to be able to give you power?" Richard asked. Again Anita bristled. She couldn't help it.

"Oui, mon lupe. One would have to release the creature for it to serve. Which tells us that it was not cooperative with its gaoler." Asher picked up another photo. "I'm surprised by something. A few somethings, in fact"

"Ah? And that would be?" Jean-Claude asked.

"Why did the demon not kill the construction workers who freed it? Why did it need the ambulance? Why did it not kill the medics in the ambulance? Would that not be in keeping with the nature of such an evil creature. Why did it disguise itself as a helpless girl?"

"Wasn't a disguise. Demons are incorporeal on Earth, remember? They can manipulate things magically, but unless they possess a mortal, they don't have a body." Anita Blake pulled a notebook from her pocket. "According to the description, the girl they pulled from the bubble was blonde, no more than five-foot-two, weighed less than about a hundred pounds, emaciated, dirty, and looked like she'd been beaten and abused. The perfect look to generate sympathy from a bunch of roughneck construction workers. Which means that the body it was possessing actually looked like that."

"But how would you know for sure, Anita?" It was a reasonable question, even if the fact that it was Richard Zeeman asking made her bristle. Of course, at this point Anita would likely bristle if Richard made a comment about how blue the sky was. "I mean, how do you know it was possessing the girl?"

"Simple mathematics." Anita realized she was going to have to elaborate. "Okay, if you want to summon a demon, you're going to need a blood sacrifice. Basically, you have to kill something to bring the demon into this world. For something small, a nuisance imp that can hurt people and break things, but isn't all that powerful, you can get away with sacrificing an animal. But..."

"But for something bigger you need a person, right?" Rafael swiped at his eyes. "And the more powerful the demon, the, uh, the more powerful the person you'd need?"

"Right. Or you could do the same thing with more than one less-powerful sacrifices." Blake looked at the picture again. "For this sort of monster? I'd say you'd have to sacrifice at least eight or nine regular people, maybe five if you were using witches or vampires or shifters."

"And the math applies how?"

"The girl was in the globe and she was alive. That means she wasn't a sacrifice, she was a vessel. She was what they were putting the demon into when they pulled it into this world." Blake shrugged. "How do you think she survived a hundred years in an air-tight glass bubble?"

"That... oh God!" Zeeman's eyes got big. "Do you think she was a volunteer, or did they force her to..."

"In almost all possessions, Monsieur Zeeman, the vessel does not wish to be possessed." Asher's face, what could be seen of it, was a landscape of unpleasant emotions.

Jean-Claude put a hand to his face, hiding his expression. The other people at the table looked shell-shocked, angry, terrified, and everything in between. The Master of the City looked from one person to the other, sitting around the conference table: Asher, Damien, Rafael, Richard Zeeman, Micah, and even the hermit-like Narcissus were all here. Upon his awakening, Anita had told Jean-Claude that she was calling a real council of war, and that's exactly what she put together.

"So what do you think it'll do?" Richard Zeeman was leaning back in his seat, staring at the ceiling. "I mean, what are we talking about, here, damage-wise?"

"What will it do? I can't tell you for sure, but I'm betting its going to involve a lot of death, destruction, and fear." Anita nodded to the photographs. "Given the amount of containment magic on that thing, Whitebridge and his people were expecting to keep the demonic counterpart to Gojira in that damned cage. I don't know if what ended up in the globe really was that bad, but they were prepared for it. So if its really that powerful, then the entire city is in peril from this thing."

"What do you mean, the entire city?" Narcissus's voice was high-pitched and quavering. The were-hyena was obviously frightened by the mere thought of the demon.

Asher was nodding. "Almost any demon is terrible." He pronounced it 'tair-eebleh". "But the protection magic used here would mean a demon of the highest order. A prince of Hell, perhaps even one of the Fallen itself."

"The Fallen?" Again, the question was from Narcissus.

"Oui. Une ange dechu." Asher looked up. "One of those that directly rebelled against God almighty and was cast into perdition for their arrogant blasphemy. And I assure you, if one such as that was trapped by the late Monsieur Whitebridge and only now released, no one is safe. No one in Saint Louis. Perhaps no one in Missouri." He shrugged. "It is even possible that the danger could include everyone in Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee... perhaps the continent. Or the world."

"Oh Christ, tell me you are joking." Richard Zeeman was staring wide-eyed at Asher.

"I am not joking , Monsieur Zeeman, but Christ would be the appropriate power to turn to in a time such as this. If this is a demon prince, or worse one of the Fallen, there is almost nothing we can do to drive it back into the pit. Surement, your usual tactics when fighting enemies of the wolves, in this case, will only get your wolves killed."

"Not to create a panic, but something just occurred to me. You know what happened this morning, yes?" Rafael looked around the table. "Seemed to have affected all all the shifters in the city simultaneously?"

"Oh God, yes." Narcissus's voice was almost a shriek. "I felt like I was sleepwalking while I was awake. I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but for me it was like watching someone that looked like me stand up and walk around while I just floated there."

Zeeman and Micah both nodded. "Yeah, same here."

"Okay, well, do you think this thing had anything to do with it?" Rafael picked up a picture, glanced at it, and tossed it back to the table.

"There is, of course, no way to know, mon raton du roi. But it is possible."

Everyone was quiet, contemplating the morning's events.

"So... what do we do about this thing?" Richard Zeeman stood and rubbed his eyes. Even before he stopped, he was pacing near his chair.

"We need to call in some exorcists. Every priest, rabbi, and imam in the city – hell, we'll talk to the guys who run the ashrams, for that matter – they'll all be needed to drive this thing out of the world." Anita Blake sighed. "Guns aren't going to cut it. Hell, if this thing is as powerful as it seemed, canons won't cut it. People are going to die, and probably by the hundreds or maybe thousands. And if it cannot be trapped and forced back into hell, then there may be no stopping it at all."

There was a sudden rush of babble while everyone tried to speak all at the same time.

**XxxxxxX**

As eventful as Buffy's day was, it was now winding down, and she was relaxing.

Buffy sighed in contentment as she chewed on the slider. Xander always said that it was the little things that made it all worth it, and boy was he right. In this case, it was a bag full of White Castle burgers. White Castles were small enough that she could almost shove an entire slider in her mouth at once, but she didn't do that. This was the first actual food she'd eaten in eighty years, and she wanted to savor every second of eating it. She knew it had to just be hunger, but these crappy little hamburgers were like ambrosia to her.

The bag of hamburgers sat on her stomach as she ate, reclining on the shitty little bed in the shitty little hotel room. The room itself was in a shitty little fleabag hotel whose clientele was mostly made up of streetwalkers plying their trade. It was the size of a closet, but it did have a bed, and a lock on the door, and bars on the windows. She could finally relax for a little while. She swallowed the last bite of her burger, licked the wrapper clean of excess grease and juice, and then started on the next one.

The dark presence in the back of her head wasn't particularly satisfied with hamburgers, but in Buffy's opinion, the dark presence was going to have to live with disappointment.

Take the guys in the ambulance, for instance. Buffy had left the ambulance in the first public parking lot she could find, once she reached downtown. She'd left the two men sleeping in the back of the ambulance, tied to their own gurney. Physically they weren't truly harmed. A little bruising here or there was all they suffered. Physically. Their dreams, however, would be forever filled with dark images of teeth and claws and bloody fangs. Psychologically, they were far from well, but that wasn't really her fault, now was it? She made sure the ambulance was locked up, placed the keys behind the front left tire, and walked away. As she left she'd altered her camouflage, going from a naked and blonde girl to a tall, thin black girl in blue jeans and a t-shirt.

She'd been hungry since escaping the crystal prison. The dark presence had suggested, almost insisted, in fact, that she eat the two ambulance attendants. It would be a convenient way to dispose of them and would be much easier than hunting up something to eat later. But Buffy demurred. She was surprised that her objections had nothing to do with cannibalism taboo or the horror of eating human meat; for some reason the idea of chowing down on a person just didn't bring up feelings of disgust and horror anymore.

It was more the realization that the last thing Buffy wanted to do was become hunted herself, and nothing would draw the eyes of the authorities faster than someone dining on a first-responder. If she really felt like hunting, killing, and eating a human being, there'd be plenty of time to do that _after_ she knew for sure that the cops weren't going to be chasing her for stealing an ambulance and kidnapping a couple of EMTs. And besides, there would have been all that blood, and Buffy was too tired to deal with the mess it would have caused. There was no way in hell she was going to bathe in this shit-hole's communal bathroom, after all.

She'd already figured out that it was close; it had vampires and werewolves and monsters and magic, but in her mind, it simply tasted too different to be her home. She'd spent a decade wondering what _It tasted too different _ meant, and how an entire world could taste like anything, but eventually let it go as unimportant. But the knowledge that she was far, far away from home guided her in formulating a plan.

Walking away from the ambulance, Buffy's plan had been simple. _First, money. Second, food. Third, clothing. Fourth, a place to stay. _Of course, if Buffy was honest with herself she didn't really need the clothing. But that wasn't the point. Her ability to camouflage herself was handy, but it wasn't as physically satisfying to Buffy as actually dressing up in nice clothes and shoes, especially when combined with a great hairdo. And she didn't want to just sleep outside, though she knew the elements wouldn't bother her. She had survived for nearly eighty years without eating, so she wasn't going to starve, but eating a decent meal at a decent restaurant once in a while was just the thing to lift a person's spirits.

Buffy was determined to recreate as much of her human existence as possible. The problem was, she was naked and without tangible resources, and Buffy decided to be honest enough with herself about the situation to know that she faced several problems.

The only people she'd met were either mad sorcerers intent on her imprisonment, or else perfect strangers who would most likely freak out completely if they found out she wasn't quite as human as she looked. Sure, the construction guys had helped her, and so did the ambulance guys, but would they had been so helpful if she hadn't hidden her tiger-like eyes and her golden skin and her fangs? Buffy bet that they'd not only be unhelpful, they'd be downright hostile. So there was no one she could ask for help.

The _food, clothing, shelter _parts of her plan all required the _money_ part of her plan. And she had no ready source of income. At least not yet. So in order to make _money, food, clothing, shelter _work she was going to have to start by stealing the money she needed until she found a job that paid well enough for her to live on. This thought hadn't made her very happy at all, but she felt she could live with it, as long as she stole it from the right – or rather the wrong – sort of people. Criminals. People who'd never go to the police and report her for robbing them.

And this was another reason why she chose not to eat the EMTs: they were just so helpful. When she questioned them about the city, and where she could get what she wanted, they answered her questions quickly and with a minimum of screaming in abject terror and despair. First they gave her directions to the wrong part of town, and from there to the really wrong part of town.

Buffy had wandered through the area at random, looking for likely targets. It took her a lot longer than she thought. Apparently all those TV movies about troubled youths, the ones that showed drug dealers and hookers on every single street corner lied to her. When she thought about it, though, she wondered why she thought that television dramatizations would be accurate. For the first hour or so, the only thing the wandering had confirmed was that the bad part of Saint Louis was nothing like the bad parts of Sunnydale or Los Angeles.

One odd thing she noticed almost immediately. The area she was in was almost literally crawling with vampires and lycanthropes. At nearly every inhabited and abandoned building she passed, and more than a few of the businesses, she felt the presence of a monster. And yet the regular people who lived and worked in these buildings didn't seemed troubled by the monsters among them.

It was dusk by the time she found the kid selling dope on the street corner. Mugging him had gained her close to three hundred dollars. Finding a pimp netted her another thousand. But the real find had been the vampire, his were-boar bodyguard, and his stable of girls. The pair had been operating out of a van in a vacant lot. At first Buffy had thought that she'd come across a vampire pimp and his rolling brothel, but it turned out to be something worse.

She'd approached the van from the dark side of the street, hoping to surprise the vampire, but he'd somehow sensed her coming. Apparently Buffy was giving off some strange vibe, because not only had he not tried to menace her away, he'd started a sort of sales pitch.

"Hey, pretty lady. Nice night for a stroll, isn't it? I know what you need and I got it right here. Young, fresh, and disease free, right from the tap." The vampire had motioned one of the girls forward; the young lady in question had pulled her hair out of the way and tilted her head so that her neck was exposed as Buffy approached. Even in the dim illumination of the streetlight, Buffy could see the scars of many sets of fangs. "Fifty bucks a pop for a nice long sip."

He actually seemed friendly. Buffy could tell just looking at him that the vampire was young. Maybe a century at most, perhaps slightly less. He wasn't a master, and he'd never be a master. She drew close and the vampire's attitude had changed. "Oh... uh... sorry about that. We don't do business with wannabe's and shifters. So, uh, beat it. Put it away, Darla." As the girl who'd been presenting her neck straightened up, the vampire had turned to the van and shrugged in Buffy's direction.

That's when the muscle made his appearance. The were-boar was tall and muscled like a body builder. His hair was pulled back in a corn-rowed mullet, and the ends were beaded. His massive arms were as tattooed as a Yakuza soldier's. A t-shirt from some band she'd never heard of was desperately close to tearing, stretched as it was across his chest. Motorcycle boots completed the ensemble. The man was menace in a pair of blue jeans, and the sneer that he gave Buffy as she got closer made it obvious that he considered her an appetizer and not a meal.

Buffy couldn't help it. She actually giggled. She immediately labeled the muscle _Pigboy._

"Something funny, bitch?" The bodyguard stepped toward her, looming. "Boss said for you to hit the bricks. Beat it before I break something off of you."

"Relax, Pigboy. Chill. I'm just here to talk to your boss." Buffy laid a hand on the bodyguard's chest and there was a flow of energy between them. The thug's arms twitched, like he was going to do something, but he abruptly fell to his knees. He stayed there for only a moment before his head rocked back and his arms shot out away from his sides as if lightning was shooting through his body.

"M-my queen! My queen! My queen..." It was a mumbled chant directed at no one. The were-boar was staring up at the unforgiving stars as if they were talking to him. The pupils of his eyes widened to almost block out the irises, and the whites of his eyes were suddenly pink as multitudes of capillaries burst. He began to cry even as his face fell into a look of almost religious ecstasy. "my-my q-queeeen... my queen... ma-hah-my que-ah-en."

"I know. Shhhh..." Buffy smiled kindly at the lycanthope. She caressed the side of the bodyguard's face as she passed on her way to the vampire, and at his touch he shuddered and sighed as if enjoying a magnificent if painful orgasm.

The vampire whirled on her, his eyes wide. "What the fuck, Bruno?"

"Thank you for telling me his name. Seems like a nice guy. So, what's your name?" Buffy stepped between the still ecstatic shifter and the vampire.

"Fuck you, that's my name!"

_**PREY**_

The girls and the vampire jumped, suddenly, as if something had leapt at them out of the shadows at them.

The vampire swung at her with all the power and speed vampires were capable of, obviously expecting to easily crush her skull. Buffy caught his fist in her left hand and held it. "Look, vampire, here's the deal..." She ducked his other fist, and his nose exploded in a spray of blood and bone from the jab she threw in response. He rocked back, obviously stunned. The vampire dropped onto his butt at Buffy's feet. She hadn't lost her grip on the vamp's fist, and twisted it a bit to put him in a more painful position.

She held the vamp on the ground from the pressure on his fist. Buffy glanced at the girls, but they were all cowering, watching her like they were bait fish and she was a shark. Darla, the one who'd offered herself to Buffy, had backed away until she tripped over the lip of the van's bed.

Buffy tilted her head to the side quickly. "Hit the road, ladies. You're taking the rest of the night off. Beat it." They ran like the very hounds of Hell itself were snapping at their feet.

Buffy slapped the vampire. Its eyes, surrounded by bruises from its smashed up nose, cleared. "On your feet, Fuck You. Come on." She grabbed him by the collar with her free hand and pulled, forcing him to stand. "Up you go. This is easier if you stand up."

"You're going to regret this..." The vampire's voice was slurred. He was clearing up fast, but Buffy's punch had seriously concussed him. "You're going to regret this. Liv won't... won't stand..."

"Shut up." Buffy punched him again. His head snapped backward and he would have fallen if she hadn't caught him.

"Liv is who? A vampire?" The bloodsucker nodded, vaguely. "You work for her?" Another nod. "Okay, that's cool. Now... give me your cash." Buffy began squeezing the fist, grinding the vampire's bones together. He squealed and almost immediately began digging in his back pocket. The roll of bills he produced was suitably large. "You got a wallet, too, Fuck You?" The vampire went digging again and handed it to her. "Is this everything?" She gave the fist another squeeze. "Is this everything?"

The vampire almost screamed. "In the van! In the van, under the seat! Fuck, stop already, please! Stop."

"Okay." Buffy's free hand extended into a large lion-like paw with two-inch long claws. One swipe and the vampire's head had bounced under the van. Without pausing, Buffy dropped the body and climbed into the van. Under the passenger seat was a metal lock-box, the kind people used for garage sales and bake sales to hold the take. It was filled with cash. Enough cash that she didn't have to risk robbing anyone else. She nodded and grabbed it. Once outside the van, she tossed the still bleeding body into the back of the van and shut the doors behind it.

The were-boar was right where Buffy had left him, staring into space, crying from bloodshot eyes, chanting about his Queen.

Buffy knelt in front of him. His head was still lifted toward the heavens, but his eyes followed her movement. They were shaky, but his eyes still moved. He was smiling, almost blissful. "Bruno? I appreciate everything you've done for me tonight."

"An-anything... ah-ah-ah-any – anything thing for you... anything for you..." Bruno had taken up a new chant. "Anything for you... any – any – anything... my... my... my life... life is... anything for you... anything... my life for you..."

"Its okay, Bruno." Buffy leaned in and took his head in her hands. Gently, almost motherly, she kissed his forehead. Buffy pulled back to stare at the man. He was smiling up at her, mouth open, teeth showing, red eyes wide and vacant. There was a connection, now. Buffy felt it. It beat with the sound of the were-boar's own heartbeat. Buffy knew, deep down, that she couldn't just abandon him.

"Go home, Bruno. Go to bed. Sleep. Rest. Be well. I might need you for something else later on, so you have to be ready, okay?"

Bruno reached out to her, almost touched her, before pulling his hand back, as if he was about to desecrate something holy and barely stopped himself before it was too late. He bowed his head to Buffy, still crying. "Yes... yes, my... yes... Queen. Yes... rest... rest... sleep... Thank you... thank you... thank you..." His voice was almost a whisper.

Buffy watched as Bruno stumbled to his feet. He staggered away with all intent and speed he could muster.

Her next stop was a K-Mart, where she bought herself some t-shirts, a couple pair of jeans, some underwear, socks, and some sneakers. It was enough to get her started. Buffy also bought a newspaper, a couple of notebooks, some pens, a map of the city, two two-liter bottles of diet coke, and a bag of peppermint spears.

The White Castle, it turned out, was on the way between the K-Mart and the Hooker Hilton. She started eating almost as soon as she left the burger joint, and by the time she had her shit-hole of a room, she'd downed eleven of the thirty sliders she'd purchased. The man behind the counter had leered at her, but he gave her a room for $40 cash, no ID required.

Buffy finished slider number thirty shortly before falling asleep for the first time since the night before she leapt from Glory's tower, back in Sunnydale.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Despite there being three locks on her room's door, Buffy took the little metal lock-box with her when she left the next morning. She didn't trust the building's management, or the super, and she absolutely didn't trust her neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, her neighbor in the room to the left, a six foot four inch tall transsexual hooker who had introduced herself to Buffy as "Daisy", was yelling at the aforementioned super, assisted by her neighbor in the room to her right, a thin mustached leather-boy named Kyle. Buffy didn't pay attention as she made her way down the staircase – the elevator was out of service, and apparently had been since the Kennedy administration – but she could tell they were yelling about a sudden increase in the cockroach and spider populations of their room. Which was odd, because bugs hadn't bothered Buffy at all.

Buffy sat on the stoop, watching the sun rise above the nearby tenements. She didn't have to wait too long before her ride appeared. Bruno parked his motorcycle at the curb, and at the sight of Buffy he smiled wide, showing all of his teeth.

"Hi, Bruno! Thanks for coming to get me." She stood, lock-box in hand. "I like your bike!"

"Thank you, my Queen! Anything for you!" Bruno handed her a helmet as Buffy climbed on behind him. "Wh-where do you want to go, my Queen?"

"Well," Buffy's voice was muffled by the full-face helmet and visor, but he could hear her just fine. "I need to go by the library; I've got to do some internet research. And I need to get some more clothes. And breakfast would be nice." Bruno nodded as she spoke. "Oh, hey, after we pick up some clean clothes and maybe a bag to put them in, do you know where I can get a shower?"

"I'll take you back to my house. You can use the shower there if you wish, my Queen."

"That'd be great. So lets stop by a K-Mart or a Wal-Mart or a Target, or something. I need at least two more shirts and some slacks. Maybe a skirt. Don't have to be fancy right now, just needs to look presentable. Can't get a job if you look like a slob, right?"

"Yes, my Queen. You want to get a job? I mean, a regular job?"

"Well, yeah!" She slapped him gently on the shoulder, as if it were a stupid question. "Can't get any money without a job, right? What did you think I meant?"

_**EXASPERATION**_

Bruno nearly jumped in his seat, as if he had heard the beast living in the back of Buffy's mind speak. His body began to shake.

_**UNNECESSARY**_

Bruno jumped again. The shaking got worse.

_Shush, you._ Buffy spoke to the presence. _It is totally necessary. And stop it. You're frightening Bruno._

_**EXASPERATION**_

_I said shush!_ She stroked Bruno's face with her hand. "It's okay, Bruno. Calm down. You're fine. I'll protect you."

"Fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I' f-f-f-f-fine. Right. Right." The biker shook his head. "Got it. I'm fine. I'm fine. Right. Protect me. Right. I mean, I mean, yes, my Queen. Yes, my Queen."

"Hey, none of that. You and me are buds, right? You don't have to always be so stuffy. I'm not going to bite you." She smiled at him, and even though there was no way for him to see it behind the helmet, he still basked in her attention. "And wipe your chin. You're drooling."

"Yes, my Queen. I'm sorry, my Queen."

"It's okay. Don't worry about it." Buffy sighed. It was obviously going to be a long road, getting Bruno to lighten up. "So Bruno, have you eaten yet?"

"No, my Queen! I, uh, I haven't eaten anything since last night."

"Well, then. Breakfast is on me. Got to pay you back for driving me around today. How's that sound?"

"It's not – You don't have to – I mean, of course, my Queen. Anything you say."

Buffy pressed her body against her new friend Bruno as the were-boar pulled his motorcycle into traffic. Not normally the most careful of riders, Bruno was almost meticulous in his care this morning, for he was taking _HER_ where she needed to go.

**XxxxxxX**

With the demon on the loose, and all the potential chaos that would cause, Anita Blake actually thought she might catch a break. But no. Dolph Storr had to call her at 7 am and ask her to report to a crime scene. The perfect end to a perfect day that hadn't technically ended seeing as she didn't even get home until a quarter of seven. She'd still been in the living room of her house when the detective had called her.

"Blake, we got a weird one."

"What and where," she sighed. Not even enough time to catch a cup of coffee.

"Vacant lot at the corner of Surridge and Truman in the Blood District. Looks like a stick-up gone bad." Storr's voice was surprisingly peppy. "Victim looks like a vampire, and we're still trying to figure out how to get to the body without exposing it to the sun."

"Right. Okay, be there in about 45 minutes. I'm stopping on the way for coffee and a cruller."

"You're stopping to eat on the way to a crime scene? Some dedication to duty."

"First, I'm not a cop. I'm a consultant. Its not a duty. Second, I just got home and have been awake all night. So if you have a problem with me stopping to get some food in me, you can blow me. You got that, Storr?"

"Yeah yeah. Just get here."

By the time she was on the scene, the coffee she picked up with the cruller was laying in her stomach like a lead weight. She knew it would be alka-seltzer city when she got back home. Anita pulled into the lot just shy of the crime scene tape. Her head was still pounding from lack of sleep, and there was a part of her that hoped some dumb ass rookie gave her shit.

"Blake, take a look at this." It wasn't meant to be. Storr was standing right there. He waved her over. There were markers on the ground, and everyone was staying clear of the back of the van.

"Anita. You're going to like this one." Zerbrowski appeared from around the front of the van.

Storr nodded. "Old lady was chasing down her chihuahua after it got out of her apartment, found it here, lapping at the blood stains. Called it in. Watch the blood spatter."

"Blood out in the open. Do we know where the blood came from?"

"Yeah." Zerbrowski hooked a thumb at the van. "Body's in the back. Head's been cut off. From what we can see, the interior is covered in the runny red stuff."

"Right. And you know the vic is a vampire how?" She peered through a side window. All of the windows except the windshield were heavily tinted, but even so there were runny stains everywhere.

"We found a head, most likely the vic, under the van near a tire." Storr was matter of fact. "When the coroner pulled it out into the sunlight to bag it, the thing caught fire, then melted."

"So much for ID-ing the victim." Blake muttered.

"Okay, well, I don't know what I can do for you. It looks like a robbery gone wrong, not anything weird. Probably a shifter, or maybe another vampire." Anita yawned huge. "You really didn't need me here, Dolph. Come on, already. I need to get back home and to bed before I fall asleep in traffic, so I'm leaving."

"Right. Get out of here. If we have questions, we'll call."

She walked back to her SUV. Zerbrowski fell in step with her. "You don't think this is related to that demon thing from yesterday, do you?"

Blake just shook her head. "No. Demon wouldn't be interested in doing this sort of thing. You're going to probably find that the vic was a selling drugs or guns or something and got killed by an irate customer. This is small potatoes."

"Okay. Thanks, Anita. Talk to you later."

She nodded, yawned again, and went home to sleep.

**XxxxxxX**

Bruno stood in the small house's main room, staring unblinking at the bathroom door. His hearing, enhanced as it was befitting his nature as a were-boar, allowed him to listen to the sounds of his Queen as she bathed and made herself holy. She was singing. Bruno didn't recognize the song, but still, she was singing, and it was the most beautiful, most terrible sound he'd ever heard.

The sound of her voice in song brought tears to his red-rimmed eyes. Bruno felt absolute joy and terror at her being in his own house. He'd give her anything, do anything, say anything if it meant that she graced him with her presence, and as long as it meant that she didn't keep her attention on him for too long. His Queen was beautiful and cruel and he loved her and despaired.

The sound of the front door opening brought Bruno out of his reverie. A woman walked in, and it took him a few moments to realize that it was Sheila. Sheila. He'd been living with her for nearly eighteen years in a common law marriage, he remembered. She was co-owner of the house; it was in her name as well as his, he remembered.

Being in his Queen's presence had caused him to forget all about Sheila. Bruno was amazed that he wasn't more troubled by that.

"Hey, baby, what's going on? How'd that thing with Fisk go last night?" She walked past him into the house's small kitchen and began digging in the refrigerator.

"Went fine. Fine. Fine. Are... are you just off... off work?" Sheila worked night cleanup at Pete's Waterhouse, the local biker haunt, he remembered. Bruno felt himself become more aware as he clicked off more and more facts about Sheila. Her favorite color. Her favorite food. Her favorite band.

"Yeah, and I'm starving. Just gonna get myself a -" Sheila's voice trailed away. Like Bruno, Sheila was a War Pig, as the local were-boars called themselves, and thus shared their enhanced hearing. She stared at Bruno, irritated. "Who the fuck is singing? Is there someone in the shower?" Sheila dropped a jar of mayo onto the counter and took a step toward the bathroom door. He interposed himself, and her expression grew stormy.

"Who the fuck is in there, Bruno? Sounds like – " And now she was angry. "Is that a girl? Did you bring a fucking girl into our house!? We talked about that shit, Bruno! We both know we're going to play around, but not in the house! Keep your whores out of the house."

Sheila shoved him aside and began pounding on the bathroom door. "Get your ass out here, you little slut! I'm going to kick your fucking whore ass up bet – URK!" Bruno tilted his head to one side as he watched Sheila's expression. She was obviously shocked and surprised, and as she slid toward the floor, her mouth opened and closed rapidly several times. Trying to talk, probably, but the presence of his knife buried in her throat made it difficult.

Sheila was threatening the Queen. No one could do that and go unpunished.

Bruno stared for a second, then pulled the knife back. He stabbed her in the throat again, then in the chest, then again in the throat. When her eyes lost the spark of life, when he was sure she was dead, he wiped the knife off on her shirt and straightened.

His Queen was in the door of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel. Watching him.

"What... Bruno, what just happened? Why'd you – Bruno, you killed her? What happened?"

**XxxxxxX**

_**December 21, 1918**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_Luther Black handed his opera cloak and hat off to one of the nameless flunkies that were positioned around the nave. He examined all the preparations; everything was set, everything was in position. The Chapel of the Holy Blood had once been an active place of worship, consecrated when Chicago was only a trans-shipment point between the shipping traffic along the rivers leading to America's heartland and the shipping traffic on the Great Lakes between the young United States and Canada. _

_That was long ago. The church had been abandoned when the wealthy and the elite of the city had packed up everything and fled before a wave of unwashed immigrants from Europe and Asia. Black had purchased the building for a song, and immediately ordered his followers to work certain changes upon the interior decor._

_The font was full of dog's urine. The pews of the nave were gone, and the floor of the chapel now featured a huge pentagram painted in human blood. The crucifix above the altar was inverted, with Christ's head now pointing toward perdition. And the altar. The altar was now the center of tonight's festivities._

_Tied down on the altar was the very same bibbling quim who had irritated him so much earlier in the evening. Her red dress, hat, mask, and feathers were long gone, as were her undergarments. She'd been drugged with opium to make her more tractable and controllable by his henchmen, who had whisked her away from the party hidden in a steamer trunk._

_She was tied in a standing position, bent nearly perpendicular to the ground. Her long blonde hair had been knotted in a rope that was connected to both her neck and her arms, which were themselves straightened and tied behind her. The rope on her arms was connected to a hook placed in the ceiling of the church, and connected by more rope. The entire thing had the effect of forcing the woman to hold her head up as straight as possible, and hold her arms in just the right position, lest she choke. And combined with the stance in which her legs were tied, it had the effect of presenting her womanly parts to anyone who stood behind her._

_Black candles burned all around the altar. A silver knife lay on the alter, under the woman's head. Black could see that the eyes were almost completely white, and that she was actually drooling._

"_We are ready for the ceremony, Lord."_

_Black nodded an acknowledgment to the man's words – Luther Black didn't bother learning the names of his flunkies unless they were important, and this one wasn't. He stripped off his clothing, then used the font to anoint his forehead, chest, and penis with the foul liquid kept there._

_Black moved behind the girl's raised buttocks. With one hand, he fondled his penis until it was almost painfully erect. He spat into the other, then rubbed the thick liquid into the folds of the woman's vagina. She moaned at the physical contact, causing Luther Black to smile. "Good... good... then let us begin."_

" _I call the Kings to Witness. I call the Kings to Watch." He moved closer, forcing himself to penetrate the woman. He could feel her shudder as he raped her. The drugs she had been given would insure her proper reaction to his efforts, regardless of what her conscious mind would have wanted. He raked his nails down her back, deep and raw, drawing bloody rivulets to begin seeping off of her flesh and onto the altar._

_The knife was just for show, a symbolic element of the ritual. All the bloodletting would be done with his bare hands._

"_I call on the Shining Darkness to assert authority over this temple to the false pauper god." He could feel himself getting closer and closer to release. Black wrapped a fist in her hair and pulled, forcing her head further back. The girl started gasping for breath. The girl was suffocating even as powerful orgasmic waves pummeled her. She was cumming like she'd never cum before in her life._

"_I call on the Edomites to claim authority over this place and make it sacred to them!" With the last words of the ritual, Luther Black's seed sprayed into the girl's womb. She shuddered uncontrollably, both from her continued orgasm and from the utter, inhuman cold caused by the touch of his semen. Black pushed her head to the side and bit into her neck. The girl's flesh parted and blood sprayed into his mouth and over his face and onto their conjoined bodies._

_He continued gnawing on her, tearing gobbets of flesh away, chewing, and swallowing them until she hung lifeless from the ropes. For an hour he devoured her flesh and blood, ripping it from her body with his teeth. When he finally stepped away from her carcass, the girl's throat was nothing but a blood-sodden mass, her head connected to the rest of her body only by a collection of of fleshy, rope-like strings._

_Luther Black stepped away from the corpse, panting. The girl's blood covered him almost from scalp to toe. The altar to which she was tied was bathed in red. He took another step back, trying to bring his breathing back under control as he studied the girl's corpse. The sacrifice had been accepted. He could feel it. He knew it. It was working. The blood sacrifice of the poor deluded girl, who'd begun the day dreaming of glamorous parties among the rich, had linked the Novum Ordo to his true endeavor._

_Black found himself enervated; more than anything, he felt like he might sleep for a day or more at once. Time to rest and recharge his energy._

_His lackeys led him away from the altar, helping him stay on his feet until he was in the private rooms formed in the church's cellars. He would bathe, he would sleep, he would eat. He'd need his strength to move his plans along. The next part of his plan was intricate, and it wouldn't do to get it wrong._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime noir stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Pendleton Legacy_ by August Derleth is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second:** So, the hunt for Buffy the Old One is on the way, the actual villain of the piece has been shown to be very villainous, RPIT and the shifter leadership has made an appearance, and the effects of being too close to Buffy have been hinted at. Please read and review, let me know what you think.


	3. The Hunter From Beyond

**The Hunter From Beyond**

**XxxxxxX**

"_First rule of magic: Don't let anyone know your real name. Names have power." – **Neil Gaiman, **"The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**August 9, 1925**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_For two weeks now, the killer the an enthusiastic police reporter had dubbed the Dog Days Killer had been holding the fears of the residents of Chicago in his blood-stained hands. Since the start of the heat wave, the police had found the bodies of ten men and women at seemingly random locations in Cabrini Green. The dead had been drained of blood. The coroners had all reported that setting in, the corpses had been carefully posed so that when rigor mortis set in, each of them was in a bizarre position that even a circus rubber-man couldn't reach. In some cases, the joints in the arms and legs, shoulders, and even necks were broken to form the eerie shapes the bodies were found in._

_Cabrini Green was a violent place, and murder was in no way uncommon. But these killings were monstrous and brutal even for a neighborhood known for its monstrous brutality._

_The last eight years had brought success after success after success, and it had made Luther Black bold and overconfident. The power normally wielded by the Covenant of the Fanged Moon had been nearly broken because of the vastly unexpected side-effect of their decision to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and Luther Black and his new cult, dedicated not to mere demon worship but to actually worshiping the Kings of Edom, had taken advantage of it and expanded around the globe._

_Black had directed his followers to infiltrate the bands of smugglers who brought opium and liquor to the United States; both breeds of criminal were used to sneak mystic artifacts into the country. The cult robbed banks just to seize safe deposit boxes known to house even more mystic artifacts. Ships carrying archaeological finds from China, Egypt, Central America, and the Orient were hijacked on the open seas. And always, these crimes were tracked back to drug dealers and bootleggers and bank robbers and pirates, but never back to their source: Luther Black._

_And now the ritual sacrifices done in the dog days of 1925 had brought Luther Black an extraordinary opportunity. The mystic power embodied in the sacrifice of ten human beings allowed the sorcerer to pierce the veil of darkness that separated the Light of Creation from the Shining Darkness. Metaphorically, Luther Black had drilled a peep-hole through the walls of the Four Worlds of Creation and into that utterly alien landscape that lay beyond all of the paltry evil known to mankind._

_The anguish that he inflicted on the sacrificial victims had served as the drill bit. The unnatural positions of their bodies and the locations at which they were left for the authorities to find had formed the dark geometry that focused Black's magicks. The terror that gripped the greater populace because of these murders – super-charged because of the agony of the heat wave – served as the hard hands that turned the drill._

_Through this peep-hole, he mystically gazed on the Kings of Edom in their dark realms. And when his spying was through, he had a greater insight on what he had to do to gain power from them._

_Because of the murders, the police were accused of falling down on the job. Newspaper editorials claimed that the reason for the police department's neglect was that because all of the victims were minorities, and were living in poverty and thus had no real value to society. The truth was that while the brave officers of the Chicago Police Department scrambled to find the killer, Luther Black manipulated the investigation by way of his puppets in the Novus Ordo._

_In the end, only two detectives were assigned to investigate the murders. Patrick Monaghey was an outcast among his fellow detectives for his refusal to accept bribes from Doyle Lonnagan, the head of the Irish mob. Adler Gerich was considered a strange duck for relying on the teachings of the Austrian head-shrinker Freud in an attempt to 'get into the minds of the criminals' and thus be able to predict their actions._

_Along with a hard-boiled private detective who name really was Dick Danger, even though no one believed him, and despite every roadblock thrown in their way by Luther Black and his puppets in the city's government, the three detectives had actually been able to find the site where Black had sacrificed his victims, not merely the site where the bodies were dumped afterward. The scene of the murders was an old textiles factory on the waterfront. Though the three men fought their way through the cultists hiding among the clanking machinery and flowing thread, they were too late to save the eleventh and final victim of Luther Black's depravity._

_They found the sorcerer clad in robes of the deepest blood red and black, wearing a goat mask that hid his face from view. Luther black had peeled back the skin and flesh from his latest victim's chest, had cracked open the man's rib cage, and had taken the poor man's heart in his hands. Black peered through the spirit captured in the organ to see beyond the infernal realms of mankind's paltry even and into the Shining Darkness of the Qliphotic Realm._

_The ritual was stopped by a quick application of a thermite grenade. The resulting fire consumed the body of the sacrificial victim, who had been suspended on the edge of death by the spell. The poor man had become a living gateway to the Shining Darkness. Though Luther Black and his three adversaries had survived, none of them escaped the ruined factory unchanged._

_Qliphothic energies had spilled forth and changed them all, if not in body then in soul, in ways they never suspected._

_Patrick Monaghey retired from the police force and became a private investigator. His cases would almost always involve magic, the preternatural, and the paranormal. Adler Gerich also left the department; he continued his education and eventually found work as a psychiatrist at Blackwell Prison, specializing treating the criminally insane. Dick Danger stayed in his chosen profession, but his sense of self-protection decreased as his need to experience situations that presented more and greater danger to himself grew. He became famous, or perhaps infamous, for barely escaping death by the skin of his teeth._

_And Luther Black, having spied into the Shining Darkness and glimpsed the shadows of the Kings of Edom, changed from an occultist seeking power enough to stand among the dark gods to a servant dedicated to freeing the Shining Kings from their eons-old mystic prison and loosing them on the world in exchange for rulership of the whole wide world..._

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Detective Tammy Reynolds blew her bangs out of her eyes as she dropped the file into her outbox. She'd come in early to get some paperwork done on the entire Whitebridge thing while Storr and Zerbrowski were out checking on the headless vampire. All told, she was glad for the quiet time. She grabbed a cup of coffee, and came back to her desk just in time for one of the uniformed runners to drop a rolling cart off at her desk.

"What's this?" The cart was stacked with books, many of them really, really old.

"Oh, the construction firm that bought the Whitebridge property pulled these and some other books out of the house along with all the furniture and stuff before they started knocking it down." The uniform shrugged. "Storr called them about anything weird or magical and this is what they sent over."

Reynolds ran a finger along the spines, looking for titles. Most of them lacked, but the ones that did caused her to shiver as she recognized them. _The Book of Hidden Names_, for example; a basic textbook on summoning and controlling demons. _The Codex Pestilientius_, another book to have if you wanted to raise up the unholy. She leaned in on one book; the cover looked for all the world like an eyeless human face that had been stretched out over black wood.

"Yeah," the runner said. "According to the note, it's all the books they couldn't recognize. They kept the copies of _Catcher in the Rye _and _Gone With the Wind _ and stuff like this. These are the weird ones."

"So why bring them to me?"

"Lieutenant Storr wanted you to look into them, see if you can find more information about that big glass jar that was in the basement of the Whitebridge House."

"Great. There goes my morning." She collapsed into her chair and reached for the first book.

**XxxxxxX**

"What... Bruno, what just happened? Why'd you – Bruno, you killed her? What happened?"

"Sh-sh-she was attacking you. You. My Queen."

"But she couldn't have hurt me, Bruno! God! What..." Buffy's expression was half surprise that Bruno would exceed any possible instruction she gave him in this particular manner, and half base irritation at having been inconvenienced. "I never asked you to kill anybody! Bruno, this is bad. This is... this is really, really bad! I mean, what are we supposed to do with her now? Do you have any experience hiding a body, Bruno? Because I sure don't! We were supposed to go get some breakfast, Bruno! And I need some clothing! Check job listings! What am I supposed to do now?"

_**EXASPERATION**_

_Whatever._ Buffy knelt next to the dead woman, looking the corpse over. Other than the stab wound in the chest and the mess that was the woman's throat, everything seemed okay. "What's her name, Bruno?" Buffy slowly withdrew the knife that bisected the woman's neck and examined it.

"Sheila, my Queen."

"Sheila." She tasted the name, memorizing it. "Is this knife silver, Bruno?" Bruno just nodded. "I'm going to hang onto it for a while, okay?" Bruno nodded again. "Well, let's take care of Sheila, shall we?" Buffy pulled Sheila flat and attempted CPR. Chest compressions, breathing for the victim, everything that Riley had taught her so long ago in another world.

It was fruitless, of course. The girl was long dead by the time Buffy tried. Her irritation at the idiotic were-boar and the frustration of having one more thing tossed at her grew as Buffy wasted time trying to revive an obvious corpse.

Nothing. It just wasn't working. All her pushing on Sheila's chest was doing was causing blood to pump out of the woman's neck. It had got all over Buffy's hands, and the spreading bloodstain in the hallways carpet was leaching onto the towel she was still wrapped in, and staining her knees and calves where she was kneeling in it.

Buffy stood. Anger and frustration poured from her in waves. Bruno's eyes widened, but he didn't move. He couldn't move.

"Perfect. This is just perfect. Damn it! I'm all bloody now. I just got out of the shower!" Buffy glared at Bruno. "And what the hell are you just standing around for, you big dummy! This is all your fault, you moron! You idiot! How could he have done this? How could he have endangered me like this? Ruined my plans like this? All I needed was a place to stay, some cloths, a job! A normal life! And you... you...

_**HUMAN**_

… _asshole! _You've ruined it! You've ruined everything!"

Buffy was fuming. The cops were going to come. They were going to want to ask questions about Bruno and Sheila and about her! She was going to get caught up in an investigation about a murder that wasn't her fault and her life would be in even bigger ruins that it already was!

Visions of the police chasing her after the death of Kendra Young flashed before her eyes. Living on the streets of Los Angeles, the things she'd done just to survive before she managed to land the waitressing job, the men she'd allowed to – _NO!_ She'd never let that happen again! The fear and anger that had been her constant companions for the last eighty years bubbled to the surface. Tears filled her eyes. Decades of frustration struck her like a cannon shell and hung heavy on her soul. She felt anger like she'd never known.

_**PUNISH**_

For once, she didn't question or resist the Presence.

She growled at the still-silent Bruno.

And leapt.

**XxxxxxX**

**_October 8, 1996_**

**_Wichita, Kansas_**

Peter Clawicz was originally a twin. The ova from which he had developed had split in the usual process by which twin children occurred. The day before he was born, while still in his mother's womb, the fetal Clawicz had opened his eyes and seen his twin for the first time. Long before he had a name or an identity, Peter Clawicz had become a murderer, for he strangled his twin brother with his own umbilical cord the day before the two of them were born.

That was eight years ago. The boy had only become more colder and crueler since birth. Her parents were terrified slaves to the child's whim. They knew him for the monster he was, and out of terror did exactly as he commanded them to do.

Today Peter was playing fetch with Toby. Toby was a pug. The dog was squat and thick and mush-faced and snorted and snuffled. He was the closest thing to a friend that Peter had, and for all that the monster child could he loved his Toby. Peter wasn't interested in scaring and harming the dog. Dogs were easy to scare, easy to kill, and when you were done there was no payoff. He loved dogs. Cats, not so much. But he loved dogs.

No, killing and terrifying people was where the fun lied. Since he was able to walk, Peter had been responsible for forty-seven murders. Eleven of them, the ones that happened in Louisville, had been connected by a police profile and were being investigated as the "Cradle-Robber Murders". He'd convinced other kids to jump off tall buildings convinced they could fly. He'd talked other kids into playing with their parents' firearms with fatal results. One red-haired girl he'd held under the water at the lake until she stopped moving. He burned a house to the ground, taking an entire family. What he'd done to his father would be an often investigated cold case by agents of the FBI for decades.

There had been many others.

But this morning, he'd been running around the yard, playing fetch the ball with Toby and laughing about it. He did this often. And when he did, he looked like every other child on the planet.

The game stopped abruptly as Peter heard a voice in his head. He stopped running and dropped the ball. Toby, thinking it was another game, grabbed it and took off for the far side of the yawn, not realizing that his boy wasn't following. Peter was listening to the voice in the back of his head. The dark voice of his real mother.

Demoiselle Nocturne had carved her domain out of Peter's dark, murderous dreams long ago, dreams which so often ended in blood and bone, with the little boy dancing among the despoiled corpses of his victims. Nocturne didn't hide the fact that she had important plans for him once he was a little older.

Peter walked into the house and found the woman who mistakenly thought she was his mother. "Go pack, Jane. We have to go to Saint Louis. Today. There's something I need to do in Saint Louis." Peter Clawicz headed to his own room to pack his own bag. He liked his travel bag. It had SpongeBob on it, and SpongeBob was the funniest thing in the entire Five Worlds, except for Toby.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

When Buffy came back to herself, she was curled up naked in a semi-fetal position under the table in Bruno and Sheila's combination kitchen/dining room. The linoleum under her was marred by rapidly drying puddles of blood. More blood covered the underside of the table. Blood covered nearly every surface she could see in the nearby kitchen.

Buffy blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She crawled out from under the table and, standing, stared at her arms and her breasts and her shoulders and her stomach. Blood covered everything in patches and long streaks, a sharp red contrast to the gold patches on her skin. It hadn't been long enough for the blood to dry completely, but it had already gone from crimson to rust. Her mouth was filled with the taste of pennies and she her tongue automatically went to places where meaty strings were caught between them.

She no longer felt the need for breakfast. On the contrary, she felt like she'd just finished with a long all-you-can eat session at the Golden Corral.

There was a pink, pulpy mass in the kitchen, shoved hard against the cabinets beneath the counter. It took her a moment to realize that this was what a human body looked like when almost all of the skin were removed, and the internal organs, and most of the flesh of one leg. Bruno. Buffy blinked at the ruined corpse of the man she had unthinkingly turned into a minion. Her head cocked to one side as she considered what was left of him. Her mouth pursed.

"Well... shit!" Buffy glared at Bruno's body. "Why in the hell did you... it's like everything I do just makes it worse." She looked down at her naked body again, noting the patterns of gold under the splashes of liquid red. "This is seriously not good. Seriously not good. Can't stay here, can't leave like this."

Sheila was still laying where she had fallen, in front of the bathroom door. Buffy stepped over the woman and back into the bathroom. She felt – the first word to come to her was _grody_, a long ago relic of her days as a Valley Girl – sticky, smelly, itchy, and gross. A look in the mirror showed that her hair was matted with blood; that it covered her lower face and necks like a clown's greasepaint.

Buffy ran the shower to as hot as she could get it and stepped in. The steaming water sluiced down her body, taking with it the initial layers of gore. She plucked the washcloth from the shower rack and scrubbed at her face, her chest, her legs... everywhere the blood had begun to dry; everywhere loose gobbets of Bruno were still sticking to her. Buffy emptied the bottle of shampoo – probably Sheila's; it smelled like citrus and lilacs – cleaning her hair.

The water was long since cold by the time Buffy stepped out of the shower. She wrapped herself in a towel, and another one for her head, then stepped over Sheila again to go into the bedroom. Sheila was larger than she was in pretty much all dimensions, but Buffy was still able to find a set of blue jeans and a belt. She rolled the cuffs on the pants and cinched the belt tight. One of Sheila's t-shirts hung large on her, but it looked less like a tent than a stylistic choice, so that was okay. Looking around, Buffy found a ratty-looking pair of womens' sneakers next to a much larger pair of deck shoes. Extra socks in the toes took care of the size difference. A light jacket completed the ensemble. She wasn't particularly bothered by the cold, anymore, but it was October in Missouri, and people would wonder why she wasn't freezing if she didn't have something.

Buffy stepped out on onto the house's front stoop – it didn't actually have a porch, just a short concrete apron with a roof over it – and stared for a moment at the car, sitting next to the driveway. She contemplated using it to get where she needed to go, but in the ended decided it was too big a risk. Sooner or later the police would come and find the bodies, and if one of the vehicles was missing, they'd hunt for it and if they found her in it...

No, it wasn't worth the risk.

Buffy went back inside and searched the house. It wasn't a very thorough search, but it did turn up a roll of twenty dollar bills in the jewelry box in the bedroom, and a coffee can filled with various denominations in in the freezer. Buffy considered searching Sheila and Bruno to see what they had on them, but in the end decided not to; she did, however, take the watch off of Sheila's wrist and put it on her own. She found a multicolored tote bag with a "Visit Branson!" imprint in the bedroom closet, and shoved the coffee can, the cash box from the van, another of Sheila's t-shirts, and an extra pair of socks into it.

Buffy glanced at the watch. It was nearing 11:00 am. She'd been asleep longer than she thought.

"This is all going pear-shaped," she said with a sigh. She left the house, trying to remember from the ride to the house that morning just how to get to the nearest bus stop.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

The homeless man awoke suddenly. He couldn't remember where he was, but he was used to that and so it did not worry him. He also couldn't remember who he was, but that was a different issue. To remind him of his true identity was to face a rage as wild and deep as a forest fire.

His master called him Arlecchino, 'The Harlequin'. It isn't his name, but he responds to it when those who know it refer to him as such. His manner of did resemble a fool's motley, in abstract. His collection of clothing was mismatched and multicolored Dirty and obviously threadbare. The man himself was extraordinarily pale, and had one familiar with the preternatural seen him, they might think him a vampire were it not for his standing freely in the sunlight. He moved with an awkward jerkiness that belied his true grace and speed. He also moved in perfect silence.

He cast no shadow in the light.

Arlecchino stared at the sky from his position next to the overflowing dumpster. He seemed to study it. He climbed to his feet, still staring at the sky, and ambled in his jerky, off-balance manner. He could not have spoken his destination had be been asked, but of course no one asked. People he got close to as he walked shied away in fear; men, women, children, honest or criminal, no one wanted to get too close to the filthy, obviously insane homeless man.

His route was a rambling one, rather than direct, and it took him nearly four hours to find it. He stood in front of the building, a two-story commercial building across the street from the Chicago Macy's in the historical district known as The Loop.

Arlecchino stared at the building, not seeing it but rather the Masonic Temple that had once stood in the current building's place. He tried to remember why the Masonic Temple was so important to him, but eventually dismissed it as unimportant. He had things to do.

He wandered into an alley running along-side the building, and there found something of use: a discarded ball-point pen. With his prize, Arlecchino returned to the front of the building and began his task. With great care, precision, and concentration, he began to etch a doorway into building's facade. It took him nearly an hour and a half, during most of which he had to endure the meaningless bleatings of some man who'd rushed out of the building. Arlecchino had paused in his work just long enough to look at the man – man, bah, he was a sheep.

He continued his work.

Shortly before finishing, a policeman had arrived and demanded that he stop what he was doing. Arlecchino ignored him. The policeman then demanded that he put his hands up and step away. Arlecchino ignored him. The policeman approached and put a hand on Arlecchino's wrist and tried to stop him from doing his work.

Arlecchino turned to the policeman with a smile and moved, just slightly. The movement was too quick for the bystanders who had gathered to watch the show to realize what happened. All they knew was that the policeman was no longer trying to arrest the homeless man. The screams started when the policeman fell backward. The bottom of a discarded ball-point pen was visible just under the officer's jawline. The point of the pen was embedded in his brain.

Arlecchino ignored it. He put the finishing touches on the door by dabbing his fingers in the blood that was seeping out of the man's throat around the pen. And then Arlecchino stepped through the door. When more police officers arrived, all the found were the screaming bystanders, the dead police officer, and a storefront wall that had been defaced with ink and blood.

On the other side of the door, Arlecchino emerged in another empty and started walking. He didn't know what it was he was looking for, but he knew it was around somewhere and he would find it if it took him thirty years.

His master demanded it.

Arlecchino stepped from the mouth of the alley, still examining his surroundings. He stopped as he caught sight of the huge structure in the distance. A gigantic arch stood over a skyline filled with shorter buildings. He didn't know why, but he seemed to remember it from somewhere. But it was no matter. It was there, and that was one of the signs his master told him to look for when coming to this new city.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

The door to Lieutenant Rudolph Storr's office slammed open, revealing an angry and slightly disheveled Anita Blake. "Okay, Dolph, what was so important that you had to wake me up after only three hours sleep?" Anita Blake hadn't just strode into the RPIT office, she had stomped. Her face was a raging thunderstorm of anger and irritation. This anger didn't surprise anyone; pissed off was Anita Blake's default setting. When she got this way, which was almost always, most of the RPIT team simply avoided her. Reynolds was immune to the anger and knew how to tap it down. Zerbrowski deflected with bad jokes and empathy. But Storr? Storr egged it on. The man didn't care, because he didn't have to.

Blake had once described Storr as a force of nature.

"Excuse me for interrupting your beauty sleep, but we had a bunch of news come back. Thought you might want to know about it." Storr stood from his desk and met her at the door, using his greater body mass to force her back into the detectives' bullpen.

"For which case? The missing demon girl, or the van with the body in it?"

"Both, believe it or not. The Forensics guys collected some fingerprints, some skin cells, and two types of hair from inside the fishbowl." Storr waved the DNA report.

"Two types of hair?"

"Yeah. First type long and wavy, the other type short and curly. Lab boys think the first is hair from the girl's head given its length, and expect the second type to be pubic hair. That fits, given that according to the construction guys, she was naked when they pulled her out of there." Storr handed Blake the forensics report. "They ran the prints and ran DNA analysis on the hair and skin. None of It came back from any of the national databases, so whoever the girl is, she's not in the system."

"Which isn't a surprise, really." Zerbrowski sat at his desk with his feet up. "If the girl was in that jar as long as we think she could have been, she predates most of the reasons why someone would be in AFIS or CODIS, when you think about it."

Without looking up from the report, Blake said, "You guys need to remember that she's not a girl, remember?"

"Hey, the body's still human. People have been rescued from possession before, right?" Zerbrowski hadn't finished asking his question when Blake started shaking his head.

"From what you tell me, she's been possessed for at least fifteen years, maybe longer. Maybe a lot longer. There's no coming back from that. Even if she can be exorcised, she's likely going to be a raving psycho after its all over. And from what we can tell, the demon inside of her isn't going to be a push-over to exercise."

"And how'd you know that?" Storr snorted. He already knew where she got the information.

"I consulted some experts. They figure that the thing inside that fishbowl was really, really powerful if it needed that much containment magic. The idea that they might have been holding a fallen angel was floated, in fact."

"You're kidding." It was clear Zerbrowski thought she was joking. Then he caught the look on her face. The detective's feet hit the floor with a loud slap. "You're serious?"

"Yeah. The vampires and weres in charge are all terrified. They've got everyone on the lookout."

"Actually that fits." Tammy Reynolds began searching through the books that were stacked haphazardly on her desk. "There was one here... I can't remember the name of it. This book, it had ceremonies and rituals for calling up some truly nasty and powerful entities. And none of them sounded like your usual hellspawn. I mean, like, there was one ritual to call up the Incarnated Spirit of Gluttony and set it against an enemy, for example. Another dealt with calling down something that I swear sounded a bit like a mythological god."

"What?"

"I swear, Lieutenant. It was like a book on how to call really horrible monsters. Not just werewolves or demons, but the kind of monsters Hercules always fought in the myths."

"Great. Just great. Fallen angels and mythological gods. That

raises more questions." Storr snorted again.

"Like what?"

Storr handed her a second report. "The stolen ambulance was recovered just inside the Blood District, in a public parking lot. The driver and the EMT were unconscious, and aside from suffering from some PTSD-like symptoms, they're pretty much unharmed. The same fingerprints as inside the fishbowl were all over the ambulance, which isn't too terribly surprising. Thing is, if this demon of yours is so evil, why are the two ambulance guys still alive?"

"The demon didn't kill them? That's way weird." She looked down at the report, baffled.

"Yeah, if you say so. From what the two guys said, the girl woke up, knocked them around a bit, tied them down to their own gurney, and asked a bunch of questions about Saint Louis."

Blake finally had enough and found a chair. "What kind of questions."

"She asked about finding a cheap hotel room, where to find a Salvation Army or something called a 'Goodwill' whatever that was. She also asked where the hookers and the drug sellers hung out at." Storr leaned on a desk. It audibly groaned form his weight. "According to them, she acted more like a really, really scary shifter than a demon."

"You think she might be a were?"

Storr shrugged. "No idea. Either way, our lab don't test for that."

"And it gets better. According to the EMT, a guy named Bill Dellert, she also asked if we had the internet, cell phones, open-toed wedges, Expresso Pumps, and Double-Meat Palaces in this dimension – that's how she asked it, in this dimension." Zerbrowski held up a hand. "And no, I have no idea what an Expresso Pump or a Double-Meat Palace is."

"That makes no sense. Why would a demon be asking about cell phones and shoes."

"Your guess is as good as anybodies," Storr shrugged. On a man his size, it was an impressive maneuver. "Now here's where it gets really interesting. The fingerprint guys were running the prints they took from the doors and interior of the van we found the headless vampire in. Whose prints should show up on the passenger side door handle, the interior of the van on the passenger seat, and on both the inside and outside of the van's rear doors?" He handed her the report from the murder scene.

Anita stared at it, unable to believe what she was reading. "What?" She looked up at Storr.

"Yeah. Me too. We got back lots of prints from that van. Some match the vic, some match a handful of known hookers who apparently have traded in sex for pay in exchange for being suckjobs for pay, and a low-level thug name of Bruno Webb who's been known to work as a leg-breaker for a couple of vamps. And then there's our friend from the bubble."

"You think she's good for killing that vamp, Dolph?"

"She could be, but who knows. As far as we can tell she hasn't actually killed anyone yet despite, you know, you saying she's demon-possessed. But I don't like her being on the scene."

Blake nodded. It was too much to ask that it be a horrible coincidence. "Have you picked up this Bruno guy or the hookers?"

"Sent some uniforms to the last known addresses of the suckjobs. I was waiting for you to get here to go talk to Bruno. He's a shifter; figured you could back us up if he decided to get hostile."

"Sure. Let's go." Anita Blake stood from her chair. "No time like the present, right?"

"Right."

**XxxxxxX**

The guy at the Gas-n-Go had helpfully supplied directions to the main branch of the public library, and Buffy had decided to walk rather than waste time doing the city bus dance. It turned out to be a pleasant experience. It was a warm morning, and the sun was shining brightly. She had particularly liked the fact that the light reflecting from the Gateway Arch glittered and shifted as her position in relation to the monument changed. It was pretty, and despite everything that happened, she was still someone who appreciated pretty. She was actually beginning to think that she might like living here. Sure, it wasn't Los Angeles, but it was okay, and if she got tired of it, she could always move back out west.

Once at the Olive Street library, Buffy did a quick reconnoiter, and decided that she approved. It wasn't as homey as the Sunnydale High library, but it was definitely more friendly than the UC Sunnydale hall of Booky Knowledge had been, and was more cosmopolitan than the Sunnydale County Library had been.

It turned out that she had to sign up on a waiting list to use a public computer terminal, but that was okay. It gave her a chance to sit down and just relax for the first time since she climbed out of the jar the Whitebridge's had kept her in. She'd just settled into the third chapter of Paulo Coelho's "Veronika Decides to Die" when her name was called.

The first thing she did was, naturally, look for any trace of herself and her friends. She'd already figured out that she wasn't in Kansas anymore, and that this world was probably some sort of alternate like the one that had produced Vampire Willow, but there might still be a chance.

It took nearly an hour. She'd been able to find her mother, under her mother's maiden name, attached to a website for an art gallery in Beverly Hills, and her dad's name attached to the website of a law firm in Los Angeles, but no mentions of herself or for Dawn. The pictures that accompanied the names confirmed that it was her parents, but again there was no mention of them being married much less having kids. She did find Sheila and Ira Rosenberg, both of whom were apparently professors of psychology at UCLA. Their bios didn't mention family either. She couldn't find any information on the Harrises at all, and Rupert Giles was apparently happily ensconced at the British Museum as a curator. And then there was the town itself. It seemed that there was no Sunnydale in California. When she looked at a map, Sunnydale had been replaced by a town called 'Santa Barbara' that Buffy had never heard of.

The whole thing made her a bit depressed. In this world, there was no Buffy or Dawn. There might be a Willow, but if there was this Willow was a Willow that had most likely grown up without the influence of a Xander. And while there was a Giles, he wasn't the same person either.

Surprisingly, it was finding Faith brought tears to her eyes. In this time, in this place, Faith had never made it past her eleventh birthday. She had died young, and in pain, and at the hands of her mother. The trial had apparently made national headlines.

For all intents and purposes, she was alone.

Out of desperation, she did searches for the other people she knew from Sunnydale. No trace of a Cordelia Chase. No Daniel Osborne, nor even a band called 'Dingoes Ate My Baby.' No trace of a Jonathan Levinson or a Larry Blaisdell, or an Aura Greenwood, or even a Tucker Welles. The only name she found that she knew was Harmony Kendall, who had apparently won the Junior Miss California pageant ten years ago when she was 8.

The whole thing made her majorly depressed.

**XxxxxxX**

"Oh come on, really?"

Since she was here and still had the computer, Buffy had decided to find out what she could about the new world she was in. Like who was president (some guy from Texas she'd never heard of, who apparently was the son of a previous president she _had_ heard of), and whether the US was at war (with _Afghanistan_ of all places; last she heard that country was an empty wasteland not worth fighting over), what movies were popular (apparently there had been five _Harry Potter _movies made in this world; back in Sunnydale the fourth book had barely been released, and none of them had been made into movies), what music was popular (she was surprised and disappointed to find that no one had apparently even heard of Cibo Matto here; on the other hand, the fact that no one had ever heard of Remy Zero made her strangely happy), and generally get a feel for her new world.

In so doing, she discovered the online archives of Washington University and their Preternatural Biology department. The materials she found explained precisely what was up with all the werewolves and vampires she'd felt wandering around town. It was enlightening, if not confusing and a little bit frightening. She was a bit freaked out by the entire 'vampires as legal citizens' thing. Vampires were evil, manipulative monsters.

"How stupid do you have to be to think of a bloodsucker as a person and not a monster," Buffy said. The kid at the next computer over, a girl who was dressed for college, gave Buffy a dirty look at muttered something about bigots, but she just shrugged it off. Clearly the girl had never actually encountered a real vampire.

In Buffy's opinion, an expanded tax base didn't seem a decent enough reason to make them legal. And she didn't care who tried to stop her, Buffy didn't see a need to wait for a cop or a warrant or a sanctioned bounty hunter or whatever when it came to killing vampires. Of course, it was possible that they were all soul-having like Angel, but even with a soul, human beings treated each other like shit all the time.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_Yeah, I think its stupid _too. Besides, if the stuff she read online was right, the vampires' political structure and constant in-fighting couldn't be good for the long-term survival of the cities they inhabited, either.

Buffy spent the next three hours poking around the internet. She looked for everything. Information on the shapeshifters. Information on magic. Information on demons. Information on vampires. She looked up information on Saint Louis tourist attractions and museums and art galleries. She looked up popular nightclubs – and when she discovered Guilty Pleasures, she immediately decided to never go there. She wasn't planning on gracing this Circus of the Freaky Vampire Side-Show Acts, either.

And when she got bored looking up information on the city, she started in with the job listings. She found several that looked possible, but there was something about them. She didn't much want to return to waitressing, but there was a retail opportunity she thought she could handle.

Buffy looked down at herself. Ratty-looking blue jeans and a t-shirt. So very much not job interview clothing. That put her back on the internet, looking for places she could buy some inexpensive but still-nice clothing, suitable for talking to people about a job.

Things were looking way up, and after that morning, she needed it.

**XxxxxxX**

Clive Perry banged on the door with the heel of his fist.

There was no answer. The RPIT detective looked at Anita Blake, and then to Donald Zerbrowski. He banged on the door again.

Still no answer.

"Two vehicles in the drive. Engines were cold." Zerbrowski shrugged.

"You want me to keep knockin'?" Perry asked.

Zerbrowski just shook his head. "Hold on a second." The senior detective stepped off of the stoop and into the empty flower bed that ran along the house's front wall. There was a huge, dirty window with curtains. Zerbrowski leaned in close to the window, cupping his hands around his eyes to block the sun. He peered past the curtains...

"Shit! There's a body! I'm looking at a body. Get that door open, now!" Zerbrowski pulled his weapon at almost the same time Blake and Perry did. Detective Perry stepped back and executed a perfect unassisted breach, kicking the door open. The three of them entered the house in a rush, leading with their weapons.

The interior of the house was quiet, cool, and filled with a coppery odor that all three recognized as belonging to spilled blood. The house's main space included a semi-divided living room/entrance area and the dining room that opened onto the kitchen. They could see body Zerbrowski had spotted in the hallway, a woman, that intersected the living room and the dining room, and past the body the heavily bloodstained area along the back wall.

Perry got motioned to check a door on the left of the main room while Blake headed down a short hallway to the right. Zerbrowski checked the pulse on the dead woman; he didn't find one, but given the amount of blood under her head, and the fact that her neck was nothing but gaping wounds, that didn't surprise him. Zerbrowski took a note of the silvery knife that lay on the carpet next to the DB, but didn't do anything with it, yet. He carefully stepped over the dead woman and did a rapid check of a side door. The bathroom. Empty, but still a bit more humid than the rest of the house. The door past the bathroom contained a bedroom. Also empty.

"Clear!" The yell from Perry was echoed by the one from Blake.

"Clear!" Zerbrowski returned. He turned and met Blake and Perry in the dining room. There was blood everywhere.

"Someone had themselves a party." Perry was staring, wide-eyed. They moved forward, carefully, and turned the corner into the house's small kitchen.

"Holy shit! What is that? Is that a guy?"

Zerbrowski glanced at Perry. Despite the man's skin being a natural mahogany color, the detective sergeant could see that Perry's complexion had paled.

"Yeah, that's a guy. And so is that over there. And that there shoved in between the stove and the wall." Blake's face was grim as she put away her weapon. "I, uh, I think its all the same guy."

Zerbrowski holstered his pistol. "Perry, get on the phone to Storr. We need a CSU out here and we need it yesterday."

**XxxxxxX**

Buffy stepped into the book store. And looked around. It looked inviting, sort of like the Magic Box always had. The shelves were wide-spaced and short enough to see over. There was no coffee bar, no big advertising stacks shoving the latest big new thing at people, and no Muzak. Oh, there was music, but it was something European and jazzy, not canned.

The job listing had said the Skylight Bookstore was looking for a sales clerk-slash-customer assistant. She'd occasionally helped Giles out with starting up the Magic Box, so Buffy figured she could handle this. It wasn't like it was a Borders or a Books-a-Million. It was just a small, home-owned bookstore. The store was empty other than the man behind the counter. Buffy watched as he huffed into the phone.

"I can't tell what you're saying, Heidi. No, Heidi. You're wheezing, Heidi." He was a shade over six feet tall, rail thin, and had a bookish demeanor that reminded Buffy of Giles. He was pale, and his hair was both tightly curled and short. "Wait... just... no, start over. Is it moving? Heidi, is the thing breathing? Okay then, there you go. If its breathing then its not dead. Not if its breathing. What? God damn it, Heidi! You called me for... look, if its hopping around then it's really, really not dead. No, Heidi, I can tell you, when animals are dead, they generally stop hopping around! No, Heidi, don't... Heidi? Heidi? Damn it." He slammed the phone down and pinched his nose. He stayed like that before noticing Buffy. "Gah!" The man shrieked. It was a high, grating noise.

"Yes?" His entire face had morphed into the universal 'please don't hurt me' look of that combined stand-offishness with a need to not offend the one with whom you were speaking..

"Hi! I'm Buffy Summers, and..." She extended a hand toward him.

"We don't sell Harry Potter anything here," he said rapidly while stepping back from her.

"No, no. It's not that. I'm here about the job." She smiled wider, trying to seem friendly. Maybe if she came across as friendly, he's start actually being friendly.

"The job?" He looked at her if she had just started talking to him in Swahili.

"Sure, the one you've been advertising?"

He nodded vaguely at her. "Ah, right, the job." He gave her another once-over, and said, "Sorry, but I'm looking for someone who's graduated the 8th grade. And didn't make me nervous."

She looked down at herself. Tan slacks and a white sleeveless blouse. She'd picked them up at a hole-in-the-wall boutique about a block away, along with some comfortable but not too stylish pumps. What was he talking about?

_**AMUSEMENT**_

The man jumped, as if shocked. Buffy concentrated, and the Presence faded away to a dull throb. She watched as the bookstore owner visibly relaxed for the first time since they started talking.

_exasperation_

"I'll have you know that I'm twenty. Successfully graduated high school and everything. I'm even looking to restart college in the next semester."

"Restart?"

"Yeah, that was a bad time. My mother died, and I had to take care of my younger sister."

"Uh-huh. So you're taking care of your sister?"

"Not any more." She hoped that the dull tone with which she answered that question got the message across.

It seemed to, as he changed the subject. "Do you have any retail experience?"

"A little."

"A little? Really? Okay. Can you name all four books in the Alexandria Quartet?"

"The Alexandria Quartet? Are those books?"

"Yes. Those are books. Four of them, in fact. You see, working here, someone might actually ask you a question about books." He smirked at her.

"You know, you're right. Someone might ask me that question, at which point I'll smile and say, 'I can look it up on the computer for you!' I'm good with computers."

"You and everybody else. Everybody's good with computers. Everybody's attached at the hip to their cell phones and their online lives, but no one can form a cogent thought to save their lives. Go home."

"Please, I really need..."

"Look – what did you say your name was again?"

"Buffy. I'm Buffy Summers."

"Buffy? Really?" She nodded, which made the man pause. "And its Buffy, not Elizabeth?" Again, she nodded. "I'm Larry Mitchell. Did your mother name you?"

"Uh, yeah." _That was a rude question._

"Is your mother an aging flower child, or a fan of _Anne of Green Gables_?" Larry crossed his arms at her.

"Well, neither anymore. She died of an aneurysm. That's why I had to take care of my sister. But yeah, she was a fan of _Anne of Green Gables._"

For the longest time, he stood there, staring at her. "Look, I'm sorry, but no. Hiring you would only give me migraines. I'd be constantly ranting and raving about your shabby education and would very likely never respect you. Not even once. I'm sure a fragile ego like yours couldn't take it. Also, there is something about you that just creeps me out. I'm sorry."

"Oh, come on! Try me!" Buffy thought quickly. "Hey, was that your daughter on the phone?"

Larry's eyes narrowed. "No, it was my wife. An adult woman who is now hysterical because she thinks her rabbit is sick. So you see, I don't need to complicate my life with contact with any more adolescents. Especially creepy adolescents."

"I told you, I'm 20. And... and... if you hire me just for the afternoon, I can take care of the store and you can go take care of what was her name? Heidi? You can go take Heidi's rabbit to the vet. And when you get back, if the store is still standing and I haven't robbed you blind, you can hire me permanently!"

His eyes really narrowed. "I don't suppose you have any references, or, I don't know, ID?"

"Uh... no. Not at the moment. I lost it. That's one reason I need the job."

He stared some more, then moved around the counter. He stood before her and again, examined her.

"Don't steal anything. Don't take any checks. Don't give any refunds. I'll be back at six. There is a mini-fridge in the store room that has some bottles of water. There's a bathroom back there too, but if you have to go, please wait until there aren't any customers and lock the door before going."

"Oh, this is great... you're not going to regret this, I promise."

"I'm already regretting it. There is something about you that is seriously making my teeth ache." He stared at her, and she merely blinked back. "I'll be back by six. Don't murder anybody. Or if you do, do it outside of the shop away from the books." Behind Larry's back, Buffy looked guilty for a moment. But only a moment.

When he was gone, Buffy walked around the corner, humming. She hadn't expected it to be that easy! It didn't occur to her until she rang up her first sale that she never once discussed pay or benefits with Larry before he left.

**XxxxxxX**

"Do we know anything yet other than the obvious?" Dolph Storr stood in the living room of the tract house.

Zerbrowski recited from his notebook. "The vics are Bruno Webber, age 32, and his common law wife Sheila Webber, age 30. ME says that the preliminary causes of death are system shock caused by massive tissue loss for him, exsanguination following being stabbed for her. In other words, he got eaten, and she was stabbed and then bled to death."

"Eaten. Great. Just what we need." Storr's face was pinched.

"Fingerprint guys have been wracking up the points." Detective Perry read from his notebook. "Lots of old prints all over ever surface of the house, and a bunch of new ones. They're working on identifying the ones we have; shouldn't be too much longer. That blood-spatter lady, Fernandez, she says that she can't say yet without looking at the body after its been cleaned up in the morgue, but her preliminary opinion from an on-sight examination is that Bruno Webber got his self killed by a pack of shifters."

"A pack?" Anita Blake perked up at that. "Like a bunch of werewolves? If so, I'm going to have to call some people."

"No, not... I mean a group of shifters. From what she can tell after measuring claw sizes and such on the body, it looks like there was everything from rats to wolves to something huge, like a bear or a tiger involved in this. Again, she can't be certain, but it looks like there was at least three people involved in killing Bruno."

"Great. I'm still going to have to call someone." Blake started to pull out her phone, but Storr's hand stopped her.

"Wait until we're done here before giving Count Dracula the heads up, okay?" She stared at him, the anger clear on her face, but at always Storr ignored it. The fact that she couldn't intimidate him only made her angrier. And then he exacerbated it by turning away from her to address Perry and Zerbrowski.

"And the girl?"

Perry nodded. "Right. The girl was stabbed three times, twice in the throat once in the chest. Murder weapon is probably the knife we found next to the body. The guy who bagged it said that he spotted something unusual on it, but wanted to take it back to the lab to make sure." Before Storr could ask, he continued. "Said it looked like there were prints applied to the weapon before and after the murder, and they weren't the same prints. His best guess is one person stabbed her and then someone else picked up the knife and left it where we found it." The detective shrugged. "Might have pulled it out of her."

"Here's something really weird. Pieces of human flesh were found partially clogging the drain in the bathtub. None of it larger than about a dime, and most of it smaller. They also found a bloody palm print on the outside of the shower curtain. Their best guess is that it was left by a female no older than about 13 or 14." Zerbrowski finished with a wry grin.

"Apparently our pack of murdering werewolves recruits them young." Storr commented.

"I thought the ME said they weren't just werewolves?" Blake locked her eyes on Storr's. Neither gave an inch.

"Guys, rent a room already, okay? We have a couple of murders to solve." Both Blake and Storr turned their attention to Zerbrowski, who hastily adjusted his overly-loud tie. In what was actually a pretty good Rodney Dangerfield impression, he added, "Geez! Tough crowd, tough crowd."

"I got to make some calls." Blake pulled her cell phone and started dialing.

**XxxxxxX**

Larry had returned to the Skylight a little bit before six, as promised, and took the opportunity to watch Buffy deal with the customers before letting her know he was back. He handed her fifty dollars out of the cash register and told her to come back the next day, they opened at ten-thirty in the morning. He'd have some paperwork for her and they'd discuss hours and pay then. Buffy figured that if the fifty was anything to go on, she'd be making a little more than eleven dollars an hour, which wasn't bad for a book store gig.

His last question, asked just before she left, bothered her for some reason.

"Are you a lycanthope, Buffy?"

"Huh? Uh, no. Why? Do you have a problem with shifters? Because..."

Larry looked even more annoyed. "If you are, I need to know so I can schedule you around the full moon."

"Oh. Right. Uh, no, not a lycanthrope. Not exactly."

He seemed to study her. "But not precisely human."

"Uh..." Buffy didn't even try to deny it, but she also didn't want to go into it. "Look, I just... I haven't... its hard to explain."

Larry sighed and held his head. "Just answer me this: are you a danger to me, or my customers?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

"Are you going to need the nights of the full moon and the next day off?"

"Um..." Buffy had no clue how to answer that. She'd never changed into anything while she was in the glass bubble, but now that she was out, maybe things had changed? There were, after all, some pretty serious spells on that fishbowl.

"Right." He sighed. "Look, I've got no problem with weres. We'll work around it, all right? Now... you seemed to have not destroyed the store, and there's actually more money in the register than when I left. So... go on home. Come back tomorrow."

She decided to celebrate her new job with a real sit down dinner before heading back to the hotel room. She said goodbye to Larry and headed off in the general direction of her hotel room. She wasn't really thinking about it as she walked, just looking for a place to sit down and eat something better than a sackful of White Castle burgers. It was only when she was walking through the door and into the restaurant that she realized the Presence had been steering her to a specific location.

It looked like a diner, along the lines of a Steak and Shake. The sign read 'The Lunatic Cafe'. Buffy shrugged and went in. She knew almost immediately that doing so was a mistake if it was her goal to lie low and not attract attention.

_You bastard. You did this on purpose._

_amusement_

_That's not a denial!I_

_amusement_

Buffy looked around the main dining room. It wasn't crowded, but it was busy enough that she was glad she was by herself. And a good half of the people were shifters, mostly werewolves, including – as far as Buffy could tell – the entire wait staff and the cook who was working the grill behind the lunch counter.

Buffy stood in the door, conscious of how many of the customers were now looking at her, not sure how to proceed.

_DOMINATE_

_Shut up already! I just want to get something to eat, for God's sake! _A waitress approached – her name tag read 'Shelly' – and Buffy again couldn't help but notice that the woman was a werewolf.

"Just you tonight, honey?" She – Shelly – was giving Buffy as much as an intense examination as she thought she could get away with.

"Yeah, just me!" Buffy shrugged, trying to seem nonthreatening. She concentrated on putting a leash on the Presence and it toned down even further than it had when she was dealing with Larry and the bookstore customers.

"Sure. Come this way." Shelley led her toward a two-person table under one of the back windows and laid a menu on the table in front of her. Buffy picked it up and gave it a cursory look. The waitress pulled an order pad out of her apron, along with a pen. "What can I get you to drink, sweetie?"

"Can I get a diet coke? Um... do you have crushed ice or cubes?"

"Oh, um. Crushed."

"In that case, lots of ice, please." Buffy looked back at the menu. "So what's good tonight?"

"Well, the special is a Philly cheese-steak in a kaiser with fries or hash browns."

The idea didn't appeal to Buffy. "Oh, hey... says here you can get breakfast any time?" She looked up at Shelly. "In that case, can I get ah..." Buffy read off the menu. "... two three-egg Western omelets? And I'll have the hash browns and... sausage, is that patty or link? You know what? Doesn't matter, just bring me four pieces of whatever. Oh, and a double side order of pancakes, please. Got any fruit syrups?"

"We've got blueberry."

"Ooh, that'd be great." Buffy looked back at the menu. And can you bring me a pot of coffee and a glass of orange juice, too?"

"Sure thing. Anything else?" The woman looked as if she couldn't believe she was asking that question, given all the food Buffy ordered.

"Nope, that'll do it." Buffy handed the menu back. She took a quick glance around the inside of the diner, noting that every single werewolf in the place, as well as the four wererats and the lone weretiger were looking at her. They were either staring at her directly, as most of the wolves and the tiger were doing, or else were keeping an eye on her surreptitiously, as the rats were.

Buffy nodded at some, waved toward others. She received very few greetings in return.

_watch_

_So much for you being Mister Megaphone. What am I supposed to be watching?_

_watch_

She casually glanced around the dining room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was only when she looked at the area behind the counter did she see something notable. The waitress who took her order, Shelly, was talking rapidly into the diner's telephone, and wasn't bothering to hide the fact that she was staring right at Buffy while doing it.

"This can't be good. Not good at all." Buffy stared out the window, trying to ignore the fact that she was the center of attention. When Shelly returned with her order a few minutes later, Buffy couldn't help but ask. "Hey, uh, Shelly? Why am I on stage? Just trying to get a meal, you know? Not planning on yanking out a shotgun and going all Wild Bunch on everybody..."

The waitress turned to look at the man behind the counter, then at a couple of people in the crowd. Whatever she was looking for, she must have seen, because she sat down at the other chair. "Look, you seem nice, but nobody knows you. Which means either you're really new, or else you're invading without permission." Shelly's eyes got hard, but not hard enough to be a threat. "Either way, the local pack needs to know about you. So eat your dinner, but don't go anywhere. You're not going to be allowed to leave until someone talks to you. Probably the Ulfric, but maybe the Geri. I don't know who's coming."

_**DOMINATE!**_

Everyone within five feet of Buffy flinched.

"Not going to be _allowed?_ I'm not going to be – Lady if I wanted to leave..._"_ The tone of Buffy's voice caused Shelly to shy back. The nearest werewolves cringed I their seat as well. Buffy took several deep breaths and once again reined in the Presence. "Fine. Fine. I'll stay and talk to these Alfred and Jerry guys." She gave Shelly a look. "You got A1 sauce here?" At Shelly's confused look, she added, "You know... steak sauce?"

"Oh. Uh, yeah."

"Good. Bring me a bottle. Now."

Shelly the Waitress clearly understood a dismissal when she heard one. She rushed away from Buffy's table, only returning when she absolutely had to. Buffy gave the rest of the diner one last glare before she turned to her plate. She could feel the tension building around her. If this Alfred guy or his pal Jerry didn't show up soon, there was going to be a fight, and she seriously wasn't in the mood to kill thirty people tonight. She just wanted to eat her omelets and pancakes and live her life without any more drama than necessary.

No, what she _really_ wanted was to go home, but that didn't look like it was going to happen any time soon. So living her life with a minimum of drama seemed a good second choice.

Buffy was three-quarters of the way through her second omelet and was looking forward to the pancakes when she noted that the constant grumbling that had accompanied her meal had died down. A huge red-haired man was approaching her table, accompanied by a couple of guys who just screamed bodyguard. Buffy rolled her eyes at them and went back to her meal. The three men stood over her, watching her eat, before the redhead sat down in the other chair.

_challenge_

"I don't remember telling you could sit." Buffy said, just loud enough to be heard. There was a gasp from the nearby tables, and the two obvious bodyguards – one a nondescript Asian man, the other a very muscular black man with long corn-rowed hair. She hadn't looked at any of them yet. Instead, Buffy concentrated on her food. "Sitting at someone else's table without being invited is rude. I don't like rude. I tend to punish rude. Now, if you want to talk to me, try again. But be polite."

"Who are..."

Buffy raised a hand and shook her head, cutting him off. She could feel the man's glare. She ignored him. Without even glancing at him, Buffy popped the last bit of the omelet into her mouth and pulled the plate full of pancakes closer. As she spread the butter pats over the pancakes, she scanned the table for the syrup. It was just to the right of the redheaded man's elbow. Finally, Buffy looked at him. The man opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say word one, Buffy interrupted. "Would you please hand me the syrup?"

She could feel every werewolf within ten feet of her bristle. Buffy ignored it and continued buttering her pancakes. Finally, she put the knife down. Without the syrup, there wasn't any point in pushing the butter around anymore.

Buffy looked at the man again. "The syrup, please?" She nodded to the small-sized pitcher of blueberry syrup. "It's right there. You're closer to it, and my arms won't quite reach. This is the part where you start over by not being rude."

The man huffed at her, but handed her the syrup.

"Thanks." She forced herself to assume the cheerful valley girl persona she'd used on countless opponents before. And there was no doubt in her mind that this man was an opponent. Not necessarily in a fight, but if she was going to live free of the drama, she was going to have to get past this guy – and no telling how many others – to do that. She drowned the pancakes in the purple sugary goodness and started in on them. Around a mouthful of pancake, she asked, "So, are you this Alfred guy they told me was coming, or are you Jerry?"

"What?" The man looked shocked and confused. Buffy smirked; he was off-footed, and that made him vulnerable.

Buffy swallowed. "Are you Alfred or Jerry?" One bodyguard, the black guy, chuckled and shook his head.

"My name's Richard Zeeman." His teeth were gritted, and was clearly very angry. Buffy got the feeling that anger might be the guy's default setting. "I'm the Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Pack."

Buffy took another bite of her pancake. "Nice to meet you, Alfred." She chewed and swallowed. "See how much politeness works better than just being rude?"

He was still angry, but took the time to calm himself. "Its not Alfred, its Ulfric. And that's my title, not my name."

"Whatever." Buffy shrugged. "So what can I do for you?"

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"I'm Buffy, and I'm eating." Buffy gestured toward the rapidly emptying plate of pancakes.

"No, what are you doing in Saint Louis?"

"Right now, I'm eating pancakes. Oh, you mean in general." She chewed and swallowed the last bite of the pancake, then absently ran her finger through the syrup residue. She sucked on her finger before pushing the plate back. "That was really, really good. Hey, Shelly!" The waitress jerked up from where she was watching the confrontation. "Can I get a coffee refill? Sorry, what was the question again?"

Richard bristled. "What are you doing in Saint Louis?"

"Oh. Well, I just got a job, and I'm hoping to move out of the hotel and into an apartment soon. You know, the entire 'start my life over' thing. My family's gone, so its just me. I figure here's as good a place as any."

"You've been in Saint Louis long enough to find a job? You've been here without my permission that long?"

The man's cell phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, jabbing at the disconnect button.

"Your permission?" Buffy scoffed. "What, I suddenly need ti ask the permission of someone I never even met to live in a new city and to get a job and look for an apartment? This is America, Alfred. Not feudal Europe. I'm an American citizen. The US Constitution says I have a right to live wherever I want. The First Amendment says so. Or maybe the Fourth. Whichever one deals with privacy. So where the hell do you get off telling other people where they can and can't live, fathead?"

The man was obviously seething. "You being here without asking for my approval is a threat to my dominance. Just walking around, you challenge me by not following the rules. What pack are you from, that they didn't teach you this?" Again, the cell phone went off. This time, the guy turned it completely off. Buffy heard him growl something about a woman named Anita and how it wasn't the time, but decided it didn't matter.

"Pack? I'm not from any pack."

"Well," the red-head muttered, smugly. "That certainly explains why you're so ignorant."

Buffy ignored the jab. "Oh, hey... I did have a question. I was doing some research earlier and I did find a little bit about pack structure and it seemed odd to me."

Richard blinked at the digression. "What?"

"Yeah. I mean, according to this professor at Washington University, the animal a lycanthrope turns into affects how he behaves and interacts, especially with other weres, right?"

"What's your point?"

"Wolves don't act like you guys are acting." Buffy just laid it out on the table.

"What?"

"Yeah. Wolf packs are ruled by a dominant pair who mate for life. There's no constant struggle for dominance and there's not a lot of polygyny. A real wolf pack is like an extended family run by grampa and grandma, with the kids and the grandkids included. Real wolves don't act like you guys act. For that matter, neither do leopards. Leopards are solitary animals. They don't form packs at all. In fact, real leopards prefer to live alone unless they get together to have babies. So what the hell is up with the wereleopards and the pards? Its like, the only weres who know what they're doing are the hyenas. From what I've read, they're actually acting like real hyenas do."

Richard started to open his mouth, but Buffy beat him to it, again.

"And while we're on the subject, what's with this combat to the death stuff to establish leadership?" Buffy shook her head. "Real wolves don't do that. They fight until one gives up or can't fight anymore, and the dominant one stays and the weaker one acknowledges the others superiority and gets to live to try again later. Not a lot of murder among wolves in the wild.

"I've got no idea what you're talking about."

Buffy gave him a hard glare, and he returned it, flashing his teeth at her. She rolled her eyes, instantly dismissing him. "Tone down the testosterone, Conan. It doesn't impress me."

Zeeman stared at her, breathing carefully through his nose in an obvious attempt to control his anger. "Pack law, recognized in every werewolf pack on the continent and around the world, demands that when you move into a new territory controlled by another pack, you have to ask their Ulfric for permission to stay and join the pack." He did another round of 'deep breath and calm'. "You were talking about being rude earlier? Introducing yourself to the local Ulfric is polite. Get it now?"

"Well. In that case, I'd like to apologize to you for my rudeness. I didn't know, and would like to make up for my error. Like I said, I'm Buffy. Would you like some coffee?" Buffy lowered the snark level. She dumped the requisite sugar and milk into her coffee and took a sip. Then another, still waiting. "Its customary when you're being rude to apologize. I just apologized to you. Its your turn to apologize to me."

"You seriously don't get how much trouble you're in, do you? You're rogue. You're outlaw. You've got no one supporting you and you're outside of pack law. Any one of these wolves could kill you without a moment's notice and no one would do anything about it other than congratulating them for putting down an outsider who was threatening the stability of the pack." Richard leaned forward and smiled wide at her, trying to assert his dominance. In the wild, showing your teeth was a threat. He reached across the table and grabbed her by the wrist. Her coffee slopped out of the cup, spilling on her new work clothes. "And then tonight, ever since I walked in, you've been blatantly challenging my authority and refusing to recognize my dominance as Ulfric. I'd be within my rights to gut you like a trout right now and leave your body hanging from a light-post."

_**DOMINATE**_

The werewolves all jumped, except for Richard. Richard just widened his teeth-baring smile. Buffy didn't even attempt to quiet the voice of the Presence, but she fought off the urge to leap across the table and kill the man. It wasn't conducive to her plans, and she knew it. She couldn't lose it here like she did with Bruno, not if she wanted to be left alone.

_**DOMINATE**_

_Right. _Buffy stared into Richard's eyes, a blatant challenge, and let her teeth get long. She grinned at him, showing her fangs. Buffy tried to see another way out, but Alfred wasn't giving her an out. He wasn't accepting her offer of a diplomatic solution. So she tried a counter-threat. "Let go of my wrist, right now, or I'll take your arm off at the shoulder and use it to beat your bodyguards to death while you're bleeding." When Richard made no move to remove his hand, she nodded. She closed her eyes, not wanting to do what she was about to do. When she opened them again, she said, "Okay. If that's how you want it, that's how we'll play it."

Moving faster than any of the wolves thought was possible, Buffy grabbed the hand holding her wrist. She pried Richard's fingers away from her through the simple expedient of breaking all four of them all at once. Richard began to howl in pain, yanking his hand back and cradling it to his chest. His fingers were bent the wrong way, at nearly an eighty-degree angle to the palm. At the same time, Buffy was suddenly on her feet. She kicked the table she'd been sitting at into the Asian bodyguard while snatching the still howling Richard out of his chair by the neck with one hand. With the other hand, Buffy grabbed the chair Richard had been sitting at and smashed it across the face of the black bodyguard. She lifted Richard into the air and slammed him into the diner's back wall and held him there.

"I tried to be nice, Alfred! I tried to be polite! I told you that I wanted no part in your bullshit! When you pointed out how I violated your 'pack law' I offered an apology and asked what would make up for it. But you wouldn't just let it go, so here we are." She pulled him away from the wall, then slammed him back into it. His head caused a crater in the drywall, and some of the framed photographs decorating the place hit the floor. The two bodyguards had jumped to their feet, but they hesitated to approach. Buffy wasn't sure why they weren't attacking, and she wasn't sure it would hold, but it gave her a moment to think.

None of the other lycanthropes in the diner were moving. Not one of them. Not the rats, not the wolves, and not the lone tiger. They were all staring at her.

She turned back to Richard Zeeman, who was clawing at her arm with his own hands. His lips were beginning to acquire a blue tinge and his eyes were fluttering. Buffy slammed him into the wall a third time, and this time the drywall cracked and fell, leaving a hole.

"Are you done, Alfred? Is this fight over?" He gave one last attempt to pull her hand away, then started nodding desperately. Buffy shook him a moment, like she was a terrier and he was a rat, and then let go. He dropped him like sack of potatoes, gasping for air and holding his neck.

Buffy turned back to the diner. No one was moving, no one was speaking. Everyone's eyes were on her, but no one was meeting her eyes. "Anyone else want a piece of me? Anyone? Come on! Now's your chance!" Almost everyone looked away, looked at the floor, the tables, anywhere but at her. Buffy turned back to Richard, still sitting at the base of the wall between the overturned tables. "You want anymore?"

Richard didn't say anything. Instead, he pushed off the wall and crawled to her on all fours. When he'd reached her, he presented his throat.

_**PREY**_

_**PUNISH**_

KILL

_No. I'm not going to just kill him after he surrendered. _Buffy stared at Richard, sitting at her feet. Without thinking about it, she knelt until her face was on a level with his, and then bit him on the nose. She held it just long enough to get the message across, then stood again.

Buffy stood. Again, no one was meeting her eyes. "Somebody help Alfred into the men's room, get him cleaned up." As an afterthought, she added, "When you're done, get him to a doctor, to see about his fingers.

One of the bodyguards, the Asian, stepped forward. "Ulfrana, you're going to let him live?"

_Ulfrana? Shit... did I just..._

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_**AFFIRMATION**_

Buffy slowed her breathing, and while doing so put the muzzle back on the Presence. "Great. Just wanted to live my life, and now I'm a Wolf Queen." She looked at the Asian bodyguard. "What's your name?"

"Shang-Da Yang. I am, I mean, I was, Richard's Hati." At her blank look, he added "His enforcer, and bodyguard."

"And you?" Buffy turned to the black man, who was still watching her. "Who are you?"

"Jamil Turner. I was Skoll to Richard." The black man was studying her. "Are you going to let us live? Richard and the two of us?"

"I don't feel like killing anyone right now, and I think I made my point." At their nervous looks, she sighed. "Look, I really did just want to live my life and be left alone. I didn't come here looking to pick a fight. I certainly didn't want to take over a werewolf pack"

"But you have." Jamil responded, his eyes narrowing.

"Yeah, apparently I have. And I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. I'm serious when I say I wasn't with a pack before. I only know what I read online about traditions and law and such. But I do know if I don't take the spot, I'm fucked because Richard will then be forced to try to kill me just to protect his position as Alpha since I already kicked his ass. But I don't want to just go around slaughtering anyone who looks at me funny and I need people I can rely on. Can I rely on you two, or do I have to rip your throats out?"

Shang-da shrugged and looked at Jamil, who returned the glance. "I don't want my throat ripped out. I'll work with you until you do something to endanger the pack."

Buffy looked down at Richard, who was still at her feet. He was looking up at her, mutely, as if not sure what was going on. Gently, she ran a hand through his hair. "How about you? Can you work with me?"

No one said a word, but eventually Richard nodded. "Yes, Ulfrana."

_amusement_

"Okay, then." She helped Richard to his feet and handed him off to Shang-Da. "Like I said, take him in the back and get him cleaned up. Shelly..." The waitress almost jumped to attention. "Come help me straighten this up. I'm sorry about the mess. And you, what's your name?" She pointed to another waitress.

"Uh, Paula. My name's Paula."

"Hi Paula, I'm Buffy. Can you bring me another pot of coffee? Jamil and I here need to have a long chat." She sat down in the closest chair and rubbed both hands down her face. What in the hell did she just drop herself into, she wondered.

**XxxxxxX**

_**September 3, 1939**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_On the same day that France and Great Britain declared war on Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, Luther Black presided over a Black Mass in a hidden temple he'd built in a secret subbasement of the Masonic Temple. On the wall behind him, a crucifix hung inverted, and on the altar in front of him, Dick Danger lay insensible and spread-eagle, chained at the wrists and ankles. The sacrifice took place in the last of Luther Black's temples – he had spent the last few years abandoning his plans for further expansion of his cult, and had been rapidly rolling up his own network of agents and cultists._

_He had already lost the Berlin temple to Hitler and his cronies. That mincing side-show act Heinrich Himmler had managed to infiltrate, subvert, and co-opt the temple for the Nazi Party's own use. They had assassinated all of the cultists who were truly loyal to Luther Black, and had enlisted most of the others into the Reich's own occult projects._

_The Shanghei temple, on the other hand, hadn't been infiltrated. It had merely been overrun by invaders, and everyone in it slaughtered. The Japanese sorcerer who called himself the Father of Lightning had commanded a force of mystically enhanced martial artists who had simply broken down the temple's doors and killed everyone they came across until the facility was theirs. It didn't matter. Shanghei had become a swirling cesspool of espionage and intrigue between the nations warring in Asia anyway, and Black had already begun plans to shut it down. The loss of so many promising cultists was disappointing, but they could be replaced._

_With what looked like a truly world-wide war looming, Black knew that it was only a matter of time before the Paris and London temples went the way the Berlin and Shanghei temples did, so he was cutting his losses early. Only the temples in Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles remained secure. The problem was, his Novus Ordo, the source of the majority of his cult's funding, was defunct. Those few among the idle rich who'd survived the Great Depression with their fortunes intact were turning their eyes toward Europe and were choosing sides, as well as suddenly remembering that they were patriotic American citizens._

_Luther Black clearly recalled the Great War, and needed no divinatory magic to realize that if the coming war in Europe combined with the current war in Asia, there was no way the United States would ever remain neutral. No way at all. So he deemed it better that he and his followers lie dormant through the coming years of war. Let the world sort itself out, and once it had, he would be waiting._

_Using dark magicks, Black programmed his followers in Los Angeles with instructions to infiltrate the rapidly developing film industry. In New York, they were programmed to worm their way into Wall Street. But he had other plans for Chicago._

_Throughout the previous fourteen years, Dick Danger had turned himself into a huge thorn in the side of Luther Black and his cult. The detective wasn't satisfied with forgetting the horrors he had witnessed, and had become obsessed with bringing the cultists who had been the perpetrators of the Dog Days Murders down._

_At the same time, Luther Black knew that the detective had been there when a hole had been torn through the fabric of Creation, and thus was not a resource that could merely be tossed away. The cult's last act before the close of the 1930s was to set a trap for their most active and irritating foe._

_Again, a brutal murder spree struck Chicago, the victims and the positions of their corpses exactly as it had been before. Dick Danger convinced Patrick Monaghey and Adler Gerich to come out of retirement for one last case: finding and stopping the madman who'd worked such horror in the world years prior. Unbeknownst to Danger, the two men had already been subverted; both former police detectives had spent the intervening fourteen years struggling against the corruptive influence of the Qliphothic energies that had tainted their souls – and had lost._

_In the end, the two men had fallen victim to the evil of the Shining Darkness. They betrayed Dick Danger, and in the end there would be no last minute escape. Bound to the altar beneath the Masonic Temple, surrounded by cultists chanting the Black Mass, Dick Danger found himself a sacrifice in a ritual created to guarantee the cult's rebirth after the war._

_Luther Black stood over the helpless detective, but did not hold a sacred knife. There would be no bloodletting in this sacrifice. Instead, the sorcerer held the Crystal Skull, an artifact found in Belize in 1927, which a cult member had stolen and replaced with a forgery. In the sacrifice, Luther Black put the skull to use. Drawing upon its mystic powers, Black tore Dick Danger's soul from his body and cast it screaming into the outer darkness, beyond the last reward promised by the outer realms of the Creation as a payment of sorts for services rendered by the Shining Darkness in the decades to come._

_With the man's soul torn from his body, Luther Black called upon the power of the Qliphothic to reanimate Dick Danger, its mystic significance intact after having its soul torn out. Dick Danger would rise again to become the right hand of Luther Black and the enforcer of the sorcerer's will._

_Calling on his own sense of the dramatic, Black dubbed his new minion 'Arlecchino'. The Harlequin._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime noir stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Pendleton Legacy_ by August Derleth is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second: **_Joan of Arcadia_ is the jointly-held property of Barbara Hall Productions and CBS Productions, in association with Sony Pictures Television.

**Author's Note the Third:** Paulo Coelho's novel _Veronika Decides to Die_ was released in 1998. Its an interesting story about finding value in the very act of living. It was made into a movie in 2009; the film version stars David Thewlis and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

**Author's Note the Fourth:** As originally plotted, this chapter did not end with Buffy taking over the Thronnos Rokke pack. But for some reason I cannot explain, her natural sarcastic nature combined with the influence of the Sineya Presence and Richard Zeeman's tendency to be a touchy little prick naturally flowed into her utterly kicking his ass. And as everyone knows, if you kick the Ulfric's ass, you become the new Ulfric. Or Ulfrana, which, by the way, is the female version of Ulfric.


	4. The Queen in Yellow

**The Queen in Yellow**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Remember your manners: etiquette will be important where we go, and good manners are gold. For a trivial impoliteness you could find yourself gifted with asses ears, or worse." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**September 7, 1944**_

_**New York City, New York**_

_Luther Black sat, silently watching the moving pictures on the screen. He had always been a devotee of the theater, and had made the transition from being a fan of plays to being a fan of movies with an ease that would have surprised and outraged certain Broadway theater snobs._

_The film he'd come to see was a Bing Crosby musical comedy called 'Going My Way.' He'd heard good things, very good things, and was looking forward to it. Luther Black never would have admitted it, but he was a fan of Bing Crosby. Not only did the man have fantastic comic timing and a velvet voice, Black happened to know that the man was also a sadistic monster who regularly terrorized his children. The dichotomy between Crosby's public persona as "everyone's favorite uncle" and his private truth as a child abuser made Black feel all warm inside._

_Luther Black carefully balanced his fedora on his knee after the woman sitting behind him respectfully asked that he remove it. With fingers steepled under this chin, he chuckled at the antics of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck along with the rest of the audience. And then the news reels began._

_With great concentration, Luther Black watched as the sepia-toned films bugled Allied triumphs in Europe over the despicable Nazi hordes: the defeat by heroic FBI agents of a cadre of Nazi saboteurs intent on destroying the New York Port Authority. Pictures of American soldiers rolling into Paris, having defeated the German occupiers of that city the month before. As the voice-over related the exploits of America's home-grown heroes and how they had furthered the cause of freedom and democracy, Luther Black realized that the War would be ending soon._

_It was almost time to come out of hiding._

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

**Saint Louis, Missouri**

Anita Blake growled at her cell phone. Richard was once again being a child. The first time she called him, the call had connected only to immediately disconnect. The second time, it had gone straight to voice mail. Same with the third. She didn't actually leave a message until the fifth call, and even then it was just a quickly delivered, "Richard call me back right now."

By the ninth call, she was getting tired of his bullshit. There was a demon loose, not to mention a pack of murderous weres, and he was playing his usual game of "I don't want to talk to you unless I need something from you." For a moment, Anita considered calling around to find out where he was just so she could bitch him out in person.

She had just started dialing for the tenth time when she felt it. Something hot and angry and violent and powerful seeping through the marks from Richard... but it wasn't Richard. It was something else. Something _other_. The mere fact that it was, that it existed, that it was there at all offended her. Its existence offended her. It _shouldn't_, but it _was_. And it was creeping at her through the marks Jean-Claude had placed on Richard Zeeman.

Anita collapsed, her legs unable to bear her weight. Whatever I_t_ was ate at her, stealing her strength. She barely noticed Detective Storr catch her as she fell, did not notice being guided into a chair. Did not hear questions about her state of being. All she could feel, hear, see, was the _It._ Whatever it was, clawing its way through Richard's marks at her.

And then whatever it was, was gone.

She could no longer feel Richard through the marks, even the small amount of connection allowed by the psychic blocks Richard had thrown up over them. It was like he had been erased. It it weren't for the fact that she could still feel the marks themselves, she'd have thought he died.

_Ma chere, what was that? What has happened to mon loupe? Why can I no longer feel him?_ Jean-Claude sent through the marks.

_I'm fine, thank you for asking. _Trust Jean-Claude to be worried about how whatever it was affected himself. _And I have no idea. Something... something's wrong with Richard. We need to find him._

"Blake, you okay?" It was Storr. It took Anita a moment to realize that he'd been in front of her all along. "You need a doctor? Zerbrowski, get her over to the hospital."

_I will try and locate him through my channels. You use yours, ma petite. Call me and let me know if you find him. And if you need to come to the Circus for safety, the door is open._

"No, no hospital." Anita stood, but was shaky. "I need to get out of here. Something's happened. Something... something's wrong."

_Fine, Jean-Claude. I'll call you in half an hour, regardless._

"What? What's the matter?"

"It's... it's got to do with the local werewolves, Storr." She knew that would shut him up. "I'll call you when I find out what's going on." Anita forced herself to straighten, then walk out without falling. She could feel Zerbrowski following her out.

"Hey, Anita, you really do look like shit. How about you let us get you to a doctor anyway?"

"Can't. I've got to take care of this now." As she climbed into her truck, she dialed Sylvie Barker, the Thronnos Rokke pack's Freki. The werewolf picked up on the fourth ring.

"_This had better be really damned important, Anita."_ Sylvie's voice was ragged with irritation. The two women just didn't get along all that well, though they did maintain a sort of Cold War-esque mutual respect.

"It is. I just felt something through the marks, something involving Richard, and now I can't feel him at all." Anita started the vehicle, then pulled out into the light evening traffic. "The marks are still there, but it's like he's gone. I need to find him. Do you know where..."

"_Yeah. I do. Not that it's any of your business anymore, but according to Shang-Da he got into a dominance fight with someone and lost. Hard. Shang-Da took him to see Lillian."_

"Oh, shit." Anita pulled a U-turn, heading for the Dr. Lillian's clinic. If Richard fought a challenger and lost, the man could be dying. He was an asshole, but she wasn't so cold-hearted that she just wanted him to die. "Wait... he's not Ulfric anymore? And what do you mean it's not my business. I'm the pack's Lupa!" Her mind reeled. Jean-Claude was definitely not going to like having his triumvirate rendered moot, not to mention his political control over the Thronnos Rokke pack.

"_You were Richard's Lupa, Anita. Now, you're just the ex-girlfriend of one of the pack's alphas. Hell, I doubt you're still Balverk. You know how this works."_ Anita did know. The challenger wasn't going to officially be the new Wolf King until he faced the alphas and dominated them all. Richard, being the loser, still had status as an alpha, but his being hurt in the challenge was no one's concern but his friends.

And if Sylvie hadn't been present during the challenge, she would be heading to face the new guy right now. It was required for her to retain her place as the pack's second, it's Geri. If she didn't stake her claim, someone else could slide it right out from under her. If she confronted the challenger and lost, the new Ulfric's position would be that much more stable, and her position as Geri would also. If she confronted the challenger and _won_, Sylvie would be the new Ulfric. Or whatever you called a Wolf Queen who ran her own pack.

"Who made the challenge?" Anita ran through the list of the pack's alphas. Aside from maybe Jamil, she couldn't figure any of them being able to take Richard down, and Jamil wasn't that ambitious. Jamil was the type of man who wanted to be the guy the actual guy counted on. "Where are they now, Sylvie?"

Jean-Claude would want to confront this person as soon as possible. There was no way the Master of the City would just let this lie without trying to get leverage on the new pack leader.

"_Anita, what part of it's not your business anymore went past your basic ability to comprehend?"_

Anita's phone went silent as Sylvie hung up. She threw the phone into the passenger seat, then beat her palm on the SUV's steering wheel. God damned bitch! Who the hell did she think she was, anyway?

_Ma petite! What is it that has you so angry? What have you found?_

The vampire was projecting a feeling of calm through the marks, but it wasn't helping much. _Richard was challenged for leadership of the pack tonight and lost. He is no longer Ulfric._

_What?!_ And now all Anita could feel was Jean-Claude's own anger, confusion, and outrage. _Mauviette idiot! Comment ose-t'il permettre aux loups d'echapper a mon controle? Que Dieu maudisse lex yeux!_

Anita shuddered. It was never a good sign when Jean-Claude lost control and lapsed back into French.

_Who did this? Who ruined the triumvirate? Who broke my allegiance with les loups?_

_I don't know. Sylvie told me it's no longer my concern, and she has a point. With Richard no longer Ulfic, I'm no longer Lupa, and there is a question about whether or not I'm even Balverk.''_

There was a period of silence before Jean-Claude continued. _I am sending Asher to you. Find this interloper and bring them to me, immediatement!_

Anita gritted her teeth. There were times when she hated Jean-Claude, and most of those times revolved around his treating her like nothing but a servant. She couldn't literally hate him; unfortunately bearing the four marks meant that she had no real choice but to loved him and follow his every command. She was a puppet who couldn't truly object, but she didn't have to like it and often didn't.

_I'm going to Lillian's clinic. Have him meet me there._ She was going to check on Richard first, regardless of what Jean-Claude wanted.

**XxxxxxX**

After Buffy had sent Shang-Da off with Richard to find a doctor, she motioned Jamil to a corner table and waved for another cup of coffee. Most of the shifters in the place had left, and the ones that had remained have switched tables until they were close enough to at least keep an eye on her if not actually overhear what she and the Skoll were saying.

Most of the stragglers were werewolves. They'd taken up positions around Buffy and Jamil as if awaiting her proclamations as Queen. It actually took Buffy a few minutes to realize that this was _precisely_ what they were doing.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

The lone weretiger was prolonging a coffee pot of his own, reading and rereading a newspaper while glancing at Buffy and Jamil every so often. Likewise, only one of the wererats had stuck. She was sitting at a table that gave her an excellent view of Buffy and her new Skoll while likewise remaining respectfully distant.

"Ever have one of those days where it ended up a long, long way from where it started?" Buffy sipped her coffee and watched Jamil over the edge of the cup. "I mean, seriously. When I woke up today I don't think I could possibly have imagined suddenly being in charge of a werewolf pack."

The man chuckled. "Yeah, I can see that." He stared at Buffy for a moment. "So. You wanted to talk to me." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yeah. I don't know anything about being in charge of a bunch of werewolves. You seem to know what's going on so I figured you'd be a good guy to hit up for information."

"Fair enough. What do you want to know?"

"What happens if I turn it down?" Buffy took another sip of her coffee. "Like I said, I didn't plan on taking over a werewolf pack. I don't know if I have time for it. I'm trying to put my life back together, and this is just adding stress where it's not wanted."

"If you turn your back on the pack now that you've taken down the Ulfric? War." Jamil was no longer chuckling. "The alphas will fall on each other. No one would accept Richard back as Ulfric, now that he's been dethroned. Your ass would be targeted by every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanting to show themselves to be the big dog." Jamil paused. "No pun intended, of course."

_amusement_

_Would you shut up already? _Buffy tried to push the presence even further back. "You're saying that since I beat Richard, they'll come for me even if I don't take over, just to show that they're tougher than I am?" Buffy shook her head. "Dominance games. It's like I'm in High School gym class all over again." Jamil just shrugged.

"Great." She finished her coffee and stared into the bottom of the cup. "Even if I turn my back on it, I'm in everyone's sights anyway. Might as well take the job then." She looked up into Jamil's eyes. "There's got to be more to it than just beating up the old Alfred, right?"

"Ulfric. It's Norwegian for 'wolf', and yes, there's more to it. You've got to stand in front of the whole pack at the lupanar – "

"What's a loopie thingy?"

"A what?" Jamil stopped, his train of thought blown.

"The loopy thingy. You said I had to stand up in front of the pack at the loopy thingy."

"Jesus, you're so fresh you still have new-car smell." Jamil snorted and shook his head. His eyes closed for a moment as he pictured the reaction if this girl called it a 'loopy thingy' while she was actually there. "Lupanar. Loo-pan-arr. It's like our holy ground. The lupanar is like our tribal land. It's an area way out of town in the woods, where we can run around as wolves during the and make the claim. No one else uses it without an invitation."

"Lupanar. Fine. So I stand up in front of everyone and tell them...

"You tell them you're claiming the throne." Jamil poured himself some more coffee. "And then -"

"There's a throne?" Buffy interrupted a second time. At Jamil's sour expression, she added a sheepish, "Sorry about that."

"Yes, there's a throne. Throne Rock, to be exact. It's a big lump of granite that's had a seat carved into it. The rock is where the Thronnos Rokke pack gets it name."

"Thronnos Rokke? Really? The pack is named after..." Buffy was going to giggle until Jamil gave her another sour look.

"You should take these things seriously, or at least respectfully. You don't come at this from a position of respect, you're going to have everyone go rogue on you."

"Right. I'll be all respecty-girl from now on. And I apologize for interrupting you. You were saying?"

"I was saying that you need to claim the throne, name yourself Ulfrana, and then you invite any challengers to your claim to step forward, if there are any."

"You say if there are any, but you and I both know there's going to be challengers. My luck isn't that good."

"Of course there are going to be challengers. You're an outsider, and no one knows you. If I were you, I'd plan on confronting all the alpha's except Richard, me, Shang-Da, and anyone who was here tonight and watched the fight making a play."

"I get why Richard's out of the running, but why would you and Shang-Da hold off? And why would watching the fight – oh. I think I get it."

Jamil shrugged. "We all saw the fight, and we know whether or not we could have beaten Richard. So we don't need to challenge you. Now, not all these challenges are going to be fights, but you should expect a couple. Even if everyone else submits, Sylvie has got to challenge you if she wants to keep her position in the pack. As it is, your taking the top spot is going to throw a lot of things into confusion."

"Who's Sylvie?"

"She's the Geri." At Buffy's confused look, he added, "Richard's second-in-command. Like I said, if she wants to stay Number Two, she's got to fight you. Even if going in she knows you're going to kick her ass, she has to fight you. It's going to be bad enough for her, because once all the alphas come after you, there's going to be some who'll take a shot at her."

_anticipation_

"I don't have to kill her, right?" Buffy had decided, after negligently causing the death of Sheila, and killing Bruno is a rage, that she was going to try, at least, to avoid killing people unnecessarily. "I mean, it's not strictly necessary for me to kill her, just beat her?"

Jamil shrugged again. "Not strictly necessary? No. I does happen sometimes anyway, but no, it's not necessary."

"Good." Buffy pushed the cooling pot of coffee away and waved toward Shelly. "Can I get some ice water, please?" The waitress nodded and went about her work. "So after I make all the alphas cry, I take the throne. Then what?"

"Then you lead the pack."

"But what's that mean?"

"Well, you're the person the pack will turn to if something comes up that a decision needs to be made about. Someone goes rogue, or there's a wolf in town causing trouble, or if two members of the pack are getting into it with each other and it causes problems with the pack. Or if we need to negotiate something with a pack from another area. And of course, the biggest thing you're going to have to deal with is the Master of the City."

"The Master of the City is the head vampire guy, right?"

"Yeah. And we're his animal to call. He can control and command wolves, both the natural kind and the were kind. A lot of vampires can do that. You're just about the only thing standing in front of the pack and enslavement by the blood-suckers."

_**RAGE!**_

This time, surprisingly, no one flinched or jumped. Jamil did push himself back away from the table by an inch. He wasn't sure what just happened, but knew that the new Ulfrana – he still couldn't get over the fact that her name was _Buffy_ of all things – had a burning anger in her eyes where there was none before.

"I'm not going to tolerate that. That's done." She said through gritted teeth. "There's not going to be any wolf servant to a vampire. Spread the word." She raised her voice so it covered the rest of the dining room. "Everybody spread the word. The wolves aren't slaves to the vampires anymore."

"I'm sorry, Ulfrana, I think it's a pretty sentiment, but I also think it's going to be damned hard to enforce." At her look, Jamil held up a hand. "I mean, some members of the pack work for Jean-Claude. Like, he pays them and they work the 9 to 5."

"Fine. If he's paying them, and they're getting benefits and are treated like human beings with rights and everything, fine. As long as they aren't being used as canon fodder in some sort of crime. No vampirey crime stuff for my wolves."

"Heh. I'm sure he's going to love hearing that. Hell, he's likely to explode just hearing that his puppet wolf is no longer in charge." Jamil narrowed his eyes at her. "I'd expect that as soon as he hears there's a new Big Bad Wolf in town, he's going to send someone to retrieve you so he can take your measure. Jean-Claude isn't going to be happy you've been living in his city without his permission."

"Yeah, well, it's not his city city. And I don't need his permission to live here any more than I needed Richard's. I'm an Los Angeles girl, born and bred in California. That makes me a US citizen, just like this Jean-Claude guy is, from what I've read. I've got rights, and he doesn't have the authority to take that away from me."

"How do you mean?" Jamil asked.

"I mean that if things come down to it, I'll sue his ass for violating my civil rights. I mean, he calls himself the Master of the City. Guy's got to be loaded, right? I'm betting I could get a competent lawyer drooling over the idea of suing this guy."

"You'd sue the..." That's as far as he got before Jamil started laughing. "That's epic. That's absolutely epic."

Buffy grinned back at him. "Make the system work for us, right?"

"Sure."

"So any other pitfalls I need to watch out for? People who will be gunning for me just because I exist? I mean, besides the head vampire guy and the other alpha werewolves?"

"Well, the leaders of the other shifter groups are going to want to check you out. Especially that fucking nutcase Narcissus." At Buffy's curious look, Jamil added, "Sado-masochistic asshole who leads the hyenas.. When I tell you he gets off on hurting people, I mean it literally. He a completely twisted little fuck who will mess you up just to watch you squirm, and will be jerking off on you while he's doing it."

"Thanks for the wonderful mental imagery."

"You're welcome." Jamil continued. "Now Rafael, the rat-king, he's not too bad a guy, but he always looks out for his own first. He can be trusted to keep his word, but he doesn't often get it. Micah, the guy who leads the wereleopards, well he's just a complete bundle of separate problems. And then there's _her_."

"Her?"

"Yeah, _her._" Jamil shook his head. "Anita Blake. She's a federal marshal and a licensed vampire executioner. She's also a bad-tempered, conceited bitch who thinks the entire fucking world revolves around her and her personal problems. She's likely going to shoot you, and she'll do it because you said the wrong thing or didn't answer her question the way she wanted, or hell, maybe just because you beat Richard in a fist-fight. And boy does she love to get her gun off. Personally, I think she cums every time she hears a gun go off, so that's why she does it so often."

"And again with the wonderful mental image. She sounds like a lovely person."

"Oh yeah, she's a peach. She'll be seeing you sooner than you want to. You see, she's not just the local executioner, she's also Richard Zeeman's ex." Buffy gave him a blank look. Jamil smiled. "He booted her to the curb after she cheated on him with Jean-Claude."

"God. Sex with vampires is never a good idea." Buffy shook her head. "What the hell was she thinking, I wonder."

"I don't think she was doing a lot of thinking."

"Think she's crazy or something?"

"Wouldn't doubt it a bit if she was. And get this. Not only is she Jean-Claude's human servant, she used to be the Thronnos Rokke Lupa. And get this: she also fucked her way into the female leadership position of the local wereleopard pard. Bitch can't keep her legs closed."

"Sounds like she discovered sleeping her way to the top works." Buffy rolled her eyes. A thought occurred to her. "Wait, you said she was Richard's ex. He didn't make her, like, the Wolf Queen, did he?"

"The Lupa? Yeah, but after the break-up he took it away from her. She's still the Balverk, though."

"Balverk?"

"Executioner. When the Ulfric, or in your case, Ulfrana, doesn't want to get his, or in your case, her hands dirty killing someone who needs killing, they turn it over to the Balverk."

"I don't want one of those. Don't need one, don't want one." Buffy said. "For two reasons. First, I don't anticipate executing anyone, what with all of us being law-abiding citizens. Murder is a crime, remember? And second, there was something I read once in this book my friend Xander lent me. It went, '_A king who uses executioners soon forgets the face of death' _or something. Can't remember exactly, but the basic idea is that if it isn't you getting your hands dirty, it might become too easy for you to just order somebody killed. You get the idea. If I do have to order someone killed, I'll do it myself."

_approval_

"Sensible policy." All around them were nodding heads. Buffy smirked. Apparently she met with people's approval. She rubbed at her forehead, and leaned forward. "Jamil, do you know what time it is?"

"Uh, yeah... almost 8:30."

"Right. I need to get back to my room." She felt grimy from the day. The shower she took at Bruno and Shelly's was long gone. "Guess I'm going to have to brave the public shower after all."

"I suppose I can give you a ride. Where are you staying?"

"I've got a room at the Parliament Hotel. Know where it is?"

"That roach-trap? Yeah, I know where it is. It's a hooker hostel. Rents rooms by the hour."

"That's the one." Buffy nodded as she stood. Jamil followed her away from the table. "I hate it, but it is all I can afford right now."

"Not anymore." Jamil responded. There are some bank accounts that are for the benefit of the pack; you know, if someone gets hurt and needs a hand or something. Paying for the operational costs of the Cafe and so on. Richard'll give you the information eventually. But the point is, the pack owns the Cafe, and the Cafe has a small apartment on the top floor that's separate from the restaurant As the new Ulfrana, you can use that apartment for whatever you want."

"Why Jamil, you keep talking to me like that and I'll give you a big wet kiss right on the lips."

Jamil chuckled, but she did notice him check her out suddenly. He shrugged as he was caught at it. "Well, I might want to take you up on it someday."

Buffy took another look at him. Jamil was tall, muscular, not all that bad looking, and had great hair. Sure, he seemed to be a bit of an asshole, but then again she wasn't looking to marry the guy. And it had been nearly a century. As Faith would have said it, there was an itch that might need a good scratching. "Oh we definitely might want to look into it sometime."

Jamil disappeared for a moment while she gathered her bags and the cashbox. He reappeared and handed her a key. "Come on, I'll show you the apartment. It's furnished. Nothing fancy, but it will do until you either get your own place or decide to just live there permanently and redecorate. It's a separate space from the Cafe; there's a staircase around the side."

Buffy followed him, actually looking forward to getting into a space that wasn't surrounded by hookers and street people. With the job, and now a place to stay, things were actually beginning to look up for her. She stopped when Jamil did, still in the parking lot. He was staring at the woman now approaching them.

"Or we could do this right now." Buffy heard him mutter to himself.

"So, Jamil..." the unknown woman began. "Got a call from Shang-Da that said Richard had been challenged at the Cafe and lost." The woman looked through the windows into the Cafe. Her eyes tracked the various individuals still inside. "So... which one is he?"

"You really want to do this now?" Jamil glanced at Buffy. Buffy cocked her head, asking silently what was going on. "There's already been a pack meeting called at the lupanar tomorrow to take care of it."

"I'm in the neighborhood, so why wait?" The woman glanced at Buffy and immediately dismissed her from consideration. Deep inside herself, Buffy bristled at the base discourtesy.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

Jamil and the new woman seemed to flinch, and Jamil once again glanced at Buffy. He stared at the new arrival, then sighed.

"Sylvie Barker, Geri-Intendant of Thronnos Rokke, may I present Buffy Summers. Ulfrana of Thronnos Rokke."

"What, _her?_ _She_ challenged Richard?" The woman, Sylvie, seemed aghast.

"Actually it was more like Richard challenged me." Buffy said. "I didn't challenge him." She saw where this was going. She sighed and stepped closer to a bench outside the cafe. Buffy her bags and the cashbox down. For a moment, Buffy contemplated taking her blouse off and fighting in just her brassiere. It was a nice blouse, and she didn't want it ruined. "I had no intention of taking over a werewolf pack. But what's done is done."

_**DOMINANCE**_

Buffy turned back to where the woman was still standing near Jamil. "Jamil, watch my things." The Skoll nodded obediently, something that was not missed by Sylvie, whose eyes narrowed. "Listen, um, was it Sylvie, or Sylvia?"

"Sylvie." The response was almost a growl.

"Right, sorry. I'm horrible at names. I've been calling Richard 'Alfred' all night. I just wanted you to know that I..."

"That's your plan? Talking me to death?" With that, Sylvie leaped. Buffy ducked under the woman's extended arms, casually noting that her hands were now fur-covered and claw-like. She spun on the ball of her left foot, bringing her right leg around in a lightning-fast kick that slammed Buffy's heel into Sylvie's solar plexus. Buffy recovered, stepped into Sylvie's reach, and punched her once, twice, three-times, to Sylvie's throat, her solar plexus again, and to the nerve bundle in her groin. Then Buffy stepped back to watch.

Sylvie landed in a heap on the pavement. She was gulping large, painful buckets-full of air with lungs that truly didn't want to work any longer. The woman gagged, trying to get control of her breathing, her muscles, control of anything while a threatening predator stood above her, but nothing worked.

Buffy nodded, then looked at Jamil. "Good enough?"

The black man nodded. She then turned to the crowd that had gathered in the door of the Cafe to watch the confrontation. "What about you folks, good enough?" There was a parade of nodding heads and the occasional, "Yeah, good enough."

"Jamil, grab my things. Let's get her up to the apartment and sitting down." Buffy leaned down and helped Sylvie stand. "Come on, Sylvie. Let's get you off the ground. Maybe get you a drink of water or something. Don't worry about walking, I'll carry you." With that, she picked the woman up in a bridal carry and followed Jamil once more.

Behind them, Shelly the waitress had pulled out her cell phone. She was going to call everybody she knew on the planet Earth and tell them what just happened.

**XxxxxxX**

The CVS hadn't had everything Buffy needed to live in the new apartment, but it had the essentials. Shampoo, hairbrush, toothpaste, the usual. It was a nice enough night, and the walk wasn't really a bother, either. It certainly gave Buffy enough time to think about things. Now, on her way back to her new home, she was for the first time in nearly a century in this new world actually having what could be termed a good time. Oh sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was at least as good as it could get.

After Buffy's confrontation with Sylvie, Jamil seemed to have settled something within himself, as if he had given up the "wait and see" attitude and was beginning to accept her as a leader. That was probably a good thing. He and Sylvie had taken Buffy back to the hotel to retrieve her things, once Sylvie was breathing again. Turns out Sylvie was all right, now that Buffy had beat the crap out of her without breaking a sweat.

Buffy sighed as she took in the city's nighttime skyline. There was too much light pollution to see the stars, which was too bad. She couldn't completely mope around, though. Things were looking up, and much more quickly than she expected, but still there were feelings of discontent. Some things had gone really well. She had a new job, after all, and the short time that she'd run the store alone had been fun. Buffy was sure she could do well at the book-store, Larry Mitchell's twitchiness and neuroses aside. And now, because of the werewolf pack, she had a roof over her head that didn't involve being able to hear the neighboring prostitutes work their trade at three in the morning.

She was getting to know people in town, and looked like at least some of them had the potential to be friends. But still, she missed her family. The sad part it had been so long since she'd seen them that she was beginning to forget them. The details were wearing away, ground down by the weight of time. She couldn't remember what color Xander's hair was, for example, or how old Dawn had been when she'd leaped from Glory's tower. The little things that once seemed so important, now were gone.

She'd have to get used to it, though. This was her life now. For however long it lasted. Time to make a new family. Some new friends. The wolves could become that new family, if she let them.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_**ETERNAL**_

_Yeah, like that's reassuring._ The thought that she might be immortal wasn't exactly thrilling. She'd had too many talks with Angel over the problem of not getting older when everyone around you got all wrinkly and gray to like the thought of not growing older. Living to see some sort of high-tech far off future might seem cool on paper, but the cost might be too much to bear in the long run.

_So. My new... well, my old philosophy made all shiny again... will be 'Life is short' even if it isn't. Well, it isn't for me. But it is for them. So seize the day and all that._

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_**WISDOM**_

_Thank you. Glad you agree._

Buffy glanced up at the sky one more time and began humming to herself. She wasn't sure what the song was, but when she thought about it thought it might have been something she heard one of the guards singing to himself back around 1948 or thereabouts. For a moment, she thought to let it bother her that she could remember a tune from 1948, fifty years prior, that she'd heard once, but couldn't remember what color Dawn's eyes were, but then decided to shrug it off.

"Da dum dum dum, ding dum dum dum... when we must say goodbye... soon you'll be sailing... da da dum dum dum... Mmmm... mmmm... ammmm... mmmm..."

She was still smiling and humming as she approached the Cafe and her new apartment. She was even swinging the bags full of newly purchased personal items in what she thought was a jaunty fashion. She stopped doing both when she saw the SUV, and the two individuals standing next to it.

The woman was barely taller than Buffy herself, with an elfin face and long black hair. She was dressed casually, but not overly casual. Brown leather jacket over a white t-shirt and black denim trousers, with calf-high boots. Buffy looked her up and down, once. The woman was wearing a pair of pistols in quick-release holsters, just below each of her kidneys. Their positioning allowed the jacket to cover them up, away from casual view.

The man, on the other hand, was tall, over six feet, and pretty-enough. He was blonde, and wore his hair long, and combed over half of his face. The man was dressed in a frilly white shirt that looked like it belonged on one of the singers from those 70s glam-rock bands her mother liked to listen to, and black leather pants that were clinging to the man so tightly that Buffy could tell he was uncircumcised.

And he was a vampire. The presence in the back of her head seemed to crouch, metaphorically, as if getting ready for a fight. Her pace slowed to a near crawl as she got closer to the pair; she gave them a sideways glance, but otherwise ignored them. Buffy stepped wide around them, giving them lots of space, as she turned down the side alley next to the Cafe, aiming for the outside staircase that led directly to the apartment.

"That's got to be her. She matches the description Sheila gave us." Buffy heard the woman say to the vampire. She rolled her eyes; Buffy would be having a long talk with Sheila in the morning about telling tales out of school. "Hey! You! We need to talk to you. Now." The tone of the woman's voice indicated that she expected to be obeyed without question. Buffy felt, more than she actually saw, the two people follow her down the alley.

Buffy stopped, her foot on the first step leading up to the apartment. She counted to twenty, in French, then looked back over her shoulder. "Good for you. Thing is, I've had a long day, and I'm tired and need a shower. So I'm going to go have a shower and then am going to lay down. You two have fun." Buffy took two more steps up when suddenly the vampire was there in front of you.

"We're here to take you to the Master of the City." The parasite crossed his arms, as if the argument were over. "You will come with us."

_**PREY**_

Behind her, Buffy heard the woman draw one of her pistols. She didn't think it was pointed at her yet, but it was out. Buffy stopped and grinned up at the vampire. "No, I won't come with you, Mr. Rude Vampire Man. I told you, I'm going to take a shower now, and then lie down. If your Master of the City wants to talk to me, he can give me a call here at the Cafe tomorrow, after I get off of work."

"It wasn't a reque -" The vampire stopped talking, shocked as Buffy shoved him out of the way with one arm and stepped past him and resumed her climb up the stairs. Within seconds, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder and spun her around. The thin plastic of the CVS bag snagged and tore, and Buffy's incidentals spilled down the staircase. Buffy ignored the vampire, instead watching her purchases scatter on the ground.

"You are so paying me back if anything just broke." Buffy looked up, directly into the vampire's eyes, refusing to back down an inch in the face of the undead thing.

**XxxxxxX**

Asher frowned as the girl met his eyes. The attempt to roll the girl's mind was automatic and reflexive, but it was like trying to climb a sheer, ice-cold sheet of polished marble. His power could find no hand-hold on which to batten. And behind that wall of marble he could feel a great and terrible power waiting to be unleashed upon him. The girl smirked at him, obviously aware of what just happened. It wasn't a humorous smirk, a sarcastic smirk. No, this was the cruel smirk of a bully spotting a victim.

There was a pulse of _something_, suddenly, that came from nowhere and everywhere at once that crawled up Asher's spine like a spider. It caused a fearful feeling in Asher that he was utterly unused to. He found himself taking a step backward, away from her, almost stumbling as he tripped up the stairs.

"Trust me, you don't want to go peeking into my head. And I told you, the guy you work for can leave a message for me at the cafe and we can set up an appointment to meet if he wants." The girl again stepped past Asher, this time bending regularly to pick up her dropped purchases. When she gathered them up in the one remaining bag, she turned back to Asher, who was still staring at her in shock.

"How can you do that?" Asher asked.

The girl huffed. "It's simple. I bend over, I use my fingers to grab the stuff I dropped, I put it in my bag. You want to get out of my way now so I can go take a shower in my nice, new apartment?" Asher looked past her at Anita, who was holding one of her pistols down at her side. The girl followed Asher's gaze.

"Are you planning on forcing me to go with you at gunpoint? Because that's kidnapping." Asher watched as Anita blinked, then put the pistol back in it's holster. The Executioner opened her mouth to say something, but the girl beat her to it. "Of course, a vampire forcing a human being to go somewhere against her will is also kidnapping. Wonder what the local Vampire Executioner would think about that."

"What?" Anita asked.

"A vampire and a female gunslinger forcing me to go someplace I don't want to go against my will. Sounds like a perfect reason to issue an execution warrant for the vampire." The girl's eyes went to Anita. "But you're human. You'll just get life in prison. Unless I'm injured in the kidnapping, or worse, killed. And then you'll get the death penalty." Another smirk. "What's the preferred method of executing condemned criminals here in Missouri?"

"Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but I'm the local Vampire Executioner."

"You're Anita Blake?" Buffy gave her a discerning gaze. "Well, that explains a lot. I'd heard that the local vampire executioner was in bed with the local vampire lord." She smirked at Anita and shrugged. "Literally in bed. Ah well, this isn't the first time a cop was on the take with the the mob. Or was sleeping with a mob boss, for that matter."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Anita seemed outraged. "I'm not on the take."

"And yet here you are, you're doing black bag work for the local vampire crime boss. Pull the other one." She turned to Asher. "Now, you... you need to step aside. If I have to, I'll make you, but I'm trying to keep this polite."

Anita called out, "If you're a human being, I'll eat my shoes. We have it on good authority that you managed to knock the Ulfric of Thronnos Rokke off his throne tonight. That makes you a lycanthrope, which puts you in the jurisdiction of the Master of the City. And he wants to talk to you. It's not polite to set up shop in someone else's city without permission."

That caused the girl to laugh. It was an uproarious laugh, not just a dainty giggle.

"What the fuck is so funny?" Anita asked.

"Oh, wow. Sorry, I needed that." The girl glanced at Asher, who's expression was grim, and he could see her restrain another laugh. There was a second pulse of _something _that came from her, and almost as soon as it hit she was laughing again. Asher and Anita rode the laughter out, both of them growing more impatient.

"I asked you a question." Asher could see Anita's hand trail toward her gun again. "What's so funny?"

"You are. You're so funny, idiot. Both of you." The girl shook his head. "It's almost like you haven't been paying attention. 'It's not polite to set up shop in someone else's city'."

"And to what have we not been paying attention, mon enfant?" Asher arched an eyebrow at her.

"First, I'm not your child. I'm not your anything and won't ever be your anything. And second, you missed the part where you vampires are citizens of the United States now. That means you're all subject to the laws of the United States. And the highest law of all in the US is the Constitution."

"So?"

"So I don't remember giving up my Constitutional rights when I beat up Alfred. _So_, this city doesn't belong to Mister Bigshot Vampire City Master Guy. _So_ he has no 'jurisdiction' at all because he's not a part of the government. _So, _he has no authority to order me to do anything I don't want to do." The young girl smiled, widely this time, showing her teeth. It was a serial killer smile, one that promised bloody violence. "To put it bluntly, the Master of the City can kiss my behind and smile."

Once again, the girl shoved her way past Asher with almost casual ease. Still in shock over her brazen disrespect of Jean-Claude, he followed her up. As she put down her bags to get out her keys, Asher decided that enough was enough. He grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands and spun her around.

"That will be enough of this non-sense ridicule! You will come with us, right now, if I have to pick you up and carry you!"

The girl looked down Asher's hands, which were still holding her arms, then again looked up into his eyes. For a second time, his power was repulsed, and for a second time, he felt something icy cold and alien behind them.

There was no fear in her gaze. Only pure, unadulterated rage. "I don't remember giving you permission to touch me." Before he knew what was happening, Asher had crashed into the ground and slid, not stopping until he was out in the street to which the alleyway connected. Everything from his neck to his waist felt as if struck by a wrecking ball. Blood oozed from his mouth, and several spots along his ribs felt not just broken but shattered. He was unconscious from the pain within seconds.

**XxxxxxX**

Anita at first didn't realize what had happened. When her brain caught up, she was already reaching for her pistols. It didn't help. Anita managed to get a first shot off while the girl was moving, but unbelievably it missed and slammed into the wood of the staircase's banister. The girl, who unbelievably had just punched Asher so hard he'd flown, was down the stairs and in front of Anita before the executioner could even blink. Anita's second shot went high and wide as the girl slapped Anita's hand away. With her other hand she took hold of Anita's shoulder and squeezed.

Anita screamed as the bones in her shoulder seemed to grind together. Her strength drove Anita to her knees. The blonde pulled the pistol from Anita's hand, all the while keeping hold of her shoulder. The reality of her oncoming death struck Anita Blake full force. She was about to die at the hands of a renegade werewolf who refused to play by the rules, shot with her own weapon in an alley. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

And then the girl surprised Anita Blake by dropping the pistol at her feet and leaving it there.

"I asked you to leave me alone, but you wouldn't. No, you thought it would be more fun to kidnap me." Anita tried to squirm away as the girl gave her an efficient if one-handed pat down. She came away with Anita's handcuffs, which were immediately put to use against Anita herself, and a handful of zip-tie restraints. "You know what your problem is, Anita? You think that rules only apply to other people. You think you're in charge of everything, when you're not. And it's time you learned that the world doesn't revolve around you. It's time you learned that you don't always get everything you want." The girl let go of Anita's shoulder, and the now-handcuffed executioner fell to her knees.

The girl continued the pat-down, relieving Anita of her cell phone and her other gun. Anita watched as she leaned down and picked up the first pistol, holding both weapons in one hand. "These things? Anita, they never help. Give them up." With that, the girl simply squeezed her hand into a fist. The metal of the pistols bent and twisted until the two were merged in a hunk of pop-art. Then she zip-tied Anita's ankles together.

"Okay. I'm going to carry you to the car. If you attack me, I'll drop you and then drag you by your ankles. Either way, you're going into the car. How comfortable your trip is up to you." Anita's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as the girl tossed her over a shoulder. She tossed Anita into the back floorboard of the SUV.

Anita couldn't see what the girl was doing anymore, but heard it when the girl spoke. "Yes, hello. I'd like to report an attempted kidnapping! I'm in an alley next to the Lunatic... right you have my location. No, I'm not in any danger. I disabled my kidnappers. I'm a black belt. A man and a woman. The man's a vampire. I attacked him by surprise. No. No, I'm... right. No, the woman had handcuffs and some of those zip-tie things that police use now. I've restrained them. I'm actually calling you from..." Her voice faded out below Anita's capacity to hear.

The executioner lay in face-down in the floorboard, wondering just what the hell was going on, and sweating. She had no idea how she was going to explain this to the guys at RPIT. She knew the kidnapping charge would go nowhere, but it was still going to be embarrassing

"Son of a bitch. When Jean-Claude hears about this, he's going to go ape-shit." Anita jerked in surprise when the back cargo door of the SUV was opened, and Asher's unconscious body was tossed in. She found herself partially buried under the vampire. She tried to roll over to get a better view, but with her ankles restrained, it was hard to move.

The girl was still talking. "No, actually there are security cameras in the alley, so I'm sure there's footage. Yes, I live in the... right." There was a sigh. "Yes, I guess you could say I was a part of the lycanthropic community. No. No. No, ma'am. The full moon isn't for another 18 days. Don't worry, I intend to be."

The girl stuck her head into the side window of the SUV. "Okay, Anita. The cops are coming for you. Be a good girl. I'm going to go put my stuff away and then wait for them."

"Let me out of these things, you bitch!" Anita demanded.

"Uh, no. The cops might release you, but I'm not going to. You tried to kidnap me. Worse, you shot at me while doing so. You threatened my life and my freedom, so I am absolutely not letting you go."

"You're a dead woman. I'm going to fucking kill you, you bitch!"

"And I'll be sure to tell the cops that you threatened to murder me when I talk to them." She could hear the girl sigh. "Now, I heard somewhere that you're a Federal Marshal. While I expect that's not going to last too long, it does mean you're probably going to be out of jail before tomorrow night. Come back at me and I'll hurt you permanent."

"Also, and this is very important, I'm making a complaint against your boss. He ordered the kidnapping. That's accessory before the fact or conspiracy to commit or something. I don't remember. It's been a while since I watched _Law and Order._ You tell your boss that the next time he wants to talk to someone, he should try to have some manners. Act civilized. This kidnapping stuff is going to get him into trouble. I don't have a phone of my own, but he can leave a message for me at the Cafe. We'll arrange a meeting." The girl leaned into the car and waggled a finger over Anita's face. "But I am not at his beck and call and neither are any of my wolves. You make sure and tell him that. My wolves are no longer his toys."

There was a pulse of power from nowhere, and it made Anita twitch. A pulse of effervescent pain shot through the marks left on her body and soul by Jean-Claude.

"Are you going to give him my message?"

"Yeah, I'll tell him, I'll tell him." Anita nodded. Her head felt light, but surprisingly she no longer felt like she was going to faint.

"Good. I'll be looking forward to his call."

**XxxxxxX**

_From the shadows, unseen and unsensed by everyone around him, Arlecchino watched as the monster in the shape of a girl played her games with the vampire and the human woman. The monster was definitely why his master had commanded him to come to Saint Louis._

_His master would be pleased._

_The monster would be confronted by Arlecchino's master, and would be forced to assist in the grand plan. Such a powerful being, with such a deep and wonderful connection with the Shining Darkness, could not be allowed to disrupt the Grand Plan by acting on it's own._

_The monster would be halter-broken, and would follow the Master's orders, or it would be destroyed._

_Arlecchino stepped back into the darkness, allowing it to embrace him and removing all traces of his presence. He would rest now. Soon enough it would be time for furious action. The Master's whore, Mademoiselle Nocturne, would be arriving soon in that ridiculously small meat sack it wore as a disguise, and then the fun would begin._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime nor stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Middleton Legacy_ by August Decathlete is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second:** This chapter was originally much longer, and detailed out more of the police and their reaction to the kidnapping, as well as some of Jean-Claude's reaction to Buffy taking over Thronnos Rokke. Unfortunately, my computer crashed at one point and the save failed, so I had to reconstruct it from memory. I decided to leave that stuff for the next chapter.


	5. The Book of Unknown Philosophy

**The Book of Unknown Philosophy**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Where humanity gets it wrong by your time, is in imagining __Atlantis__as having any kind of quantifiable existence. Which of course it hasn't; not in the way they imagine anyway. There have been quite a few Atlantises, will be quite a few more. It is just a symbol. A symbol of the Art."_

"_The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the West that is lost to us, but remains forever, true birthplace and true goal." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**January 25, 1952**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_Sitting at a desk under an aging photograph of J. Edgar Hoover, Luther Black flipped through a file concerning everything the FBI knew about his own organization. He'd awakened one of his sleeper agents, now the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the FBI. While he was here, he also reviewed what little intelligence the United States government had concerning other "occult threats" to the country._

_It wasn't much, to be honest. And this was a good thing. The federal government was blind to the truth regarding magic and the occult, and this blindness was a weakness he could exploit. It would allow him to work in the safety of the shadows, free from interference by the rulers of the world. Certainly, they were merely mortal men, but was it not true that even an ant could bring down a tiger, given the presence of enough angry ants?_

_During the immediate post-war years, Luther Black had traveled around the world. He'd tracked down the surviving members of Heinrich Himmler's coven of warlocks. After lengthy interrogation of those furtive men who had snuck out of Germany like thieves rather than face capture and execution at the hands of the Americans – or worse, enslavement to the Russians – Black had learned much about the RsvKg, its methods, and its membership. Not surprisingly, the Nazi's occult circle had included some of Black's former rivals in the Covenant of the Fanged Moon._

_While he traveled, he also visited ancient places of power – Stonehenge and Glastonbury, Manchu Pichu and Tiahuanaco, Easter Island and Ayer's Rock, the ruins of lost Ophir and the pyramids of Egypt, Angkor Wat and Kailasa Temple. At each of these sites, the ambient mystical energy was pooling and spilling over, as a dry gulch might overflow with water from a flash flood. But there was nothing natural about this sudden surge in magical energy, and nothing Luther Black had witnessed indicated the flood of power would end any time soon._

_On the contrary. Something had caused the world's levels of arcane power to rise._

_A new age of magic had dawned. Ancient grimoires had hinted at times in the distant past – the Lemurian Age, the Atlantean Age – when mortal wizards had wielded powers so great that modern-day mystics scoffed at the legends. But Luther Black knew enough of those times to envision the future._

_Soon. His time of Ascension was coming soon. That was the only possible conclusion. The surge in magical power meant that the Kings of Edom would be free, and he, Luther Black, would stand among them as an equal._

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Lieutenant Dolph Storr of the Saint Louis Police Department, senior officer in the Regional Preternatural Investigation Taskforce, grumbled to himself as he climbed from his car. It was one of his more common complaints. At nearly seven feet tall, and almost three-hundred pounds of muscle, Storr had found that the world was simply not built to the scale of a man his size. Which meant that he did not so much as leave his vehicle as took the thing off, like he was discarding a piece of clothing.

A few years ago, he'd seen a commercial featuring the basketball star, Shaquille O'Neal, that featured O'Neal dealing with cars that were too small, shower heads that were too low, doorways that were too cramped, and had for a moment felt relieved that someone else knew his pain.

_The Lunatic Cafe_, Storr thought. _Fucking perfect. Fucking werewolf wonderland._ The uncontrollable rage Storr had been feeling lately toward anything related to the supernatural threatened to surface once more, and the detective forced himself to swallow it. He'd been through the mandatory anger management therapy to help him control this reaction, but sometimes it didn't help much.

He leaned back into the car and grabbed his coffee. No way he was dealing with this without a cup of coffee. He took a sip of the still-steaming liquid as he surveyed the scene. Storr didn't react as took note of the four patrol units, the ambulance, and the crime scene van, but his mouth twisted into a scowl as he saw the remote van from KMOV. _Must be a slow news-day, _he thought to himself. Usually, the mainstream news ignored violence in the Blood District.

He nodded as his second-in-command, Sergeant Zebrowski, approached.

"Glad you're here, Dolph." Sergeant Zebrowski grinned as he spoke. The man was always grinning.

"So what's happening that was worth me getting out of bed at -" a quick glance at Storr's watch "- two in the morning?"

"Attempted kidnapping, possible attempted murder." Zebrowski shook his head. The smaller man turned and pointed towards the staircase climbing up the side of the Cafe. "The intended victim, one Buffy Anne Summers, formerly of Los Angeles, California, managed to disable and restrain her attackers, then called 911." At the base of the staircase, talking to two of the uniforms as an EMT attended to her, sat a slightly built black girl. Even though she was sitting, Storr could see that the girl was short. Shoulder-length wavy hair. Deep brown skin. Strong jawline. Looked athletic, though, and was definitely not intimidated talking to the police.

"What was she doing here? At the Cafe, I mean?" Storr gave the girl another look. He decided he was going to have to talk to her himself and began his way over. He took another sip of his coffee. "She a wolf?" Both detectives knew that the Cafe was run by shifters.

"She apparently lives in the apartment over the restaurant. And – you're going to love this part, Dolph – that little girl?" Zebrowski hooked a thumb at the girl and grinned again. "She's not only one of the fur-and-fang club, she's the new Big Bad Wolf."

"What?"

"Yeah. You're looking at the new head werewolf hereabouts. Way she tells it, she's had the job for about a day and a half."

"Wait. Don't the werewolves choose a leader by beating the shit out of each other? I met the head werewolf. He's like Arnold Fucking Schwarzenegger. How the hell does a little girl like this beat a monster like him?"

"You're asking me?"

Storr shook his head. It wasn't strictly relevant. "Okay, so. Someone attempted to kidnap and maybe murder the leader of the local werewolves. We need to get Blake in here, seeing as she has connections with the dog pack. See if she knows who would -"

"Yeah, about that." Zebrowski interrupted. He ran a hand through his hair, which Storr knew was one of Zebrowski's tells. The other detective was clearly nervous as hell about something. "Turns out, Blake's already involved."

"How's that?" Storr looked around, finally spotting Anita Blake sitting in the back of the ambulance. "She get hurt or something?"

"Or something. Seems Anita and one of her Dracula pals tried to put the bag on our vic. According to Miss Summers, she was coming back from a run to the CVS for sundries when she was accosted by Anita and her accomplice, one of that Jean-Claude guy's vamps, who demanded she accompany them and then got physical when she refused." Zebrowski shrugged. "I haven't talked to Anita yet, so I don't know her side of the story, but I've already checked with central. There are no outstanding warrants for anyone named Summers in the system."

"And what's Anita say?"

Zebrowski ran his hand through his hair again. "Anita's saying that all she was doing was bringing the new Wolf Queen to see the Vampire Master of the City, that Miss Summers was a bitch and wouldn't cooperate, and that they were just trying to persuade her."

Storr just shook his head. "Great. Fucking great. Just fucking perfect. Just trying to persuade her? And how were they doing that?"

"Well, according to our vic, Anita's vampire escort attempted to persuade Miss Summers by grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling at her, while Anita tried to persuade Miss Summers by pulling her gun and opening fire."

"There were shots fired?" Storr asked, wanting to confirm for himself how bad this situation was turning out to be.

"At least one. The crime scene guys dug a bullet out of the wood of the staircase. They haven't done tests, but they figure it looks to be the same caliber as what Anita normally uses." The shorter detective chuckled. It was a rueful sound. "Of course, looks like some of the tests they usually run on bullets are going to be difficult to do. They recovered two pistols from the scene, and they look like they've been run through a machine press. The vic says she did it, – destroyed the guns, that is – in order to safely restrain Anita."

Storr rubbed his eyes. "She destroyed – right, sure she did. Probably just by squeezing them in her hand. What a night. Okay, let's go talk to Blake first, and then this Summers girl."

**XxxxxxX**

Anita Blake stewed in her own angry juices as the EMT fussed over her. Two cops stood nearby, sneering at her. It was humiliating. The first cops on the scene had talked to the Bitch – Anita still didn't know the girl's name, but it didn't matter; she was going to be "The Bitch" in Anita's head from now on regardless – and then jerked her out of the floorboard of her SUV. They put her in shackles, the same set of restraints they used on rogue shifters. Her wrists were manacled to each other with a titanium bar between them. The bar was chained to her waist, and then to her ankles.

And then the same asshole who chained her up read her, her Miranda rights. Like she was the criminal. Like she was some kind of danger to society. It was only because of Zebrowski that she hadn't been hauled off to jail yet. The detective had ordered them to hold her while first the CSU tech had swabbed her hands and taken her jacket and belt – the rest of her clothing would be taken as evidence as soon as she hit the jail. Right now, the EMT was tending as best she could to the bruising and abrasions on Anita's face and arms.

Blake was still scowling as Detectives Storr and Zebrowski approached. "Get me out of these things, Dolph!" It was a growl. Even knowing how tenuous her position was, knowing that she was dependent on the Lieutenant's good will right now, Anita Blake couldn't keep the hostility out of her voice.

Storr decided to ignore her. Rather, he addressed the uniforms who were watching over her. "Has she been Mirandized?"

"The fuck? Come on, Dolph, you -" Anita's temper flared as Storr held up a hand, silencing her. "Officer?"

"Yes, sir. Detective Zebrowski made sure we did that as soon as we had her in cuffs. The evidence tech's done with her too, for now." The uniformed officer – his name tag read Jarrett – nodded toward Zebrowski. "We were going to go ahead and haul her down to Central Avenue but the Sergeant thought we should wait for you."

Storr nodded. Only then did he address Anita Blake. "All right, Blake. Did you understand your rights as Officer Jarrett read them to you?"

"Oh, fuck you, Dolph. Just uncuff me already, will you? This is a joke. I was just doing my job, here." Blake rattled her shackled wrists at the detective. It was a dick move and she knew it, but she couldn't resist. Dolph needed to understand that she wasn't interested in a pissing contest with her. This was serious shit, and he needed to fall in line.

The action, and the words, made the uniforms and Zebrowski wince. They knew what was coming; even Anita knew. She just didn't are.

Storr was visibly gritting his teeth. Apparently he wasn't in the mood right now to put up with Anita's usual disregard for his authority. "Let me ask you again. Marshall Blake, did you understand your rights as Officer Jarrett read them to you, or do you need them explained a second time."

Anita Blake blinked. _Okay, so this is how Storr's going to play it. Fine, I'll play his silly-assed games._ "Yes," she huffed finally. "Yes, I understand my rights. Can you take the fucking cuffs off of me now? There's something wrong about this girl, and we need to -"

"Marshall Blake," Storr interrupted. "We are going to be transporting you to the Central Avenue jail, where you will be booked on charges of attempted kidnapping, attempted murder, and aggravated assault. There may be further charges made against you at a later time." Anita couldn't believe what she was hearing. Storr wasn't even giving her a chance to explain what was going on. He was just arresting her for no damned reason at all. "Ms. Blake, be warned that you are considered a preternatural threat, and any action you take to resist while you are in custody will receive a full and potentially lethal response in order to preserve the safety of the arresting officers. Do you understand this warning?"

"Of course I understand that, Dolph... I've given that same speech – Wait! Wait, just one damned minute!"

Again, Storr cut her off. "Thank you." He nodded to Officer Jarrett. "Get her out of my sight."

"Dolph, hey, stop this! Seriously? Dolph! DOLPH! You don't understand. This girl? She's dangerous. There's something going – Hey! We just needed to – wait! Wait! Dolph! Talk to me! Just – damn it! Wait! You know me, Dolph! It's me! You can't just-" The hulking detective turned his back on her as the uniform tugged on her arms. The man never looked back once, even as she was loaded into the back of a patrol car.

"Yeah, I know you, Anita. That's the problem." The detective muttered to himself. He was silent for a moment. He shook his head and went back to work.

**XxxxxxX**

Buffy smiled at the EMT, but it was a smile full of regret. The medic had a face mask on, and had put on three pair of rubber gloves before he would touch her to look at the "wounds" she'd manifested on herself to make her story a bit more realistic. It took a moment for Buffy to realize that she, the EMT, was actually terrified of her.

_amusement_

_Shut up, you._ Buffy sighed, and smiled again at the EMT. "I'm not going to bite you, you know. That would be all kinds of rude, and you're being very nice to me."

The medic blinked. "Yeah, well, its your blood. Your kind is contagious, and I don't want to get – I don't want to come in contact – look, I'm sorry, okay?" The woman shook her head. "It's nothing personal. I'm sure you're a nice girl and all, its just... You're a werewolf. I never treated a werewolf before, and it's -" The medic trailed off. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to become one of you."

Buffy didn't correct the woman's impressions. If being thought of as a werewolf helped her cover, she was fine with people assuming she was a werewolf. Hell, she'd probably be fine with people assuming she was a were-hedgehog, if there was such a thing, as long as it helped her keep under the radar. The last thing she wanted was for people to get the idea that she was some immortal demon-possessed monster.

_amusement_

_I said shut up._ Buffy visualized herself shaking a finger at the entity as she concentrated on shoving it to the back of her mind._ You know, you and I are going to have to sit down one day and hash out who is in charge here. Yeah, you live in the back of my skull, but for God's sake, its my skull, okay?_

Buffy took a deep breath, then nodded to the EMT. "I understand. Its okay. Really."

The EMT looked relieved. "I'm not a bigot. I promise. I'm just scared."

"Its okay." She reached out and took the woman by the wrist. Her hand had been shaking as she painted the scrape on Buffy's face with a disinfectant wipe in preparation for bandaging it. The cop, a uniformed police officer, immediately dropped his hand to his weapon and opened his mouth to say something when Buffy let the woman's wrist go. It was all very gentle and reaffirming. "Go slow. One step at a a time." The cop actually had the decency to look embarrassed

The EMT nodded to her, then nodded to the cop. "Right. Go slow." She resumed cleaning the scrape.

Moving only her eyes, Buffy took in the rest of the scene. She saw both Jamil and Shang-Da standing outside of the police perimeter, trying to stay in her line of sight while simultaneously not being noticed by the cops themselves. Both were yawning, but they'd responded to her call, made right after the 911 call. There were a handful of shifters – mostly wolves, but also a couple of other types, rats and hyenas mostly – and a small handful of vampires in and among the crowd, all gawking like tourists. No doubt some of them were just standing around watching the police work, attracted by the lights. A couple of the gawkers she recognized from the dining room of the Lunatic Cafe, earlier, and those that met her eyes got friendly smiles and nods.

The others, though. There were at least three – a wererat and two vampires – who were doing a very bad job at not looking like they were watching her every move.

_**SPIES**_

The EMT stopped her ministrations and shivered. _Yeah, probably. Some of them. Keep it down. You're scaring people. _"Go on." Buffy smiled at the woman again, and the medic careful began to bandage Buffy's face. It was purely cosmetic. If Buffy had willed it, he 'injury' would be gone in seconds, having not really existed in the first place. But it was part of the show.

The detective who had reminded her so much like Peter Falk in that old show Columbo thatXander had liked to watch was approaching with another cop. The other cop – and it was obvious he was a cop – was huge. Like, Luke the Vampire huge. Like Gorilla Monsoon and Hulk Hogan huge. And as this man-mountain of a cop got closer, his face slowly gained the expression Buffy always thought of as the "someone farted In the elevator" face.

"Bunny Summers?" Gorilla Monsoon was actually sneering at her. "I'm Lieutenant Storr, lead investigator for RPIT. Sergeant Zebrowski and I need to take your formal statement regarding the incident." His eyes roamed over her, taking in the ratty tank top and sweat pants she was dressed in. "I understand the crime scene unit have already processed you?"

_Apparently,_ Buffy realized, _I'm the one who farted in the elevator._ "Yeah, they took my jeans and my shirt. Swabbed down my hands and my face. And its Buffy, not Bunny." The EMT finished taping down the bandage on her face and murmured something about being careful not getting it wet before fading out of Buffy's sight.

Columbo winced. The other cop didn't blink at the correction. "Could you give us your full name, please?"

"Sure! Buffy Anne Summers."

"Is Buffy a nickname?" Gorilla Monsoon scowled at her.

"Nope, its my actual name. My mom gave me that name. She was a fan of _Anne of Green Gables_, you see, so she -"

"How old are you, Miss Summers?"

"How old am I?"

_**calm**_

_**think**_

_**hide**_

"Yeah, what's your date of birth?" The big man was staring right into her eyes. The entity in the back of her head was beginning to feel challenged. For a moment she wondered about the hostility in Gorilla Monsoon's voice, then figured he was trying to get her off-balance. Thing is, it was working.

Buffy did some math in her head. "January 19. Um, 1978. I'm 22."

"You're 22, and you're supposed to be the head of the local werewolf pack?" He gave her the up-and-down and snorted. "How'd you manage that?"

Buffy shrugged. "I challenged the old Alfred to a fight and won. I didn't like how he was pushing me around. So, now I'm in charge and he's not. That's how werewolf packs work." She shrugged again. "If someone else in the pack doesn't like it, they can challenge me, and if they win, they're the Ulfric."

"You weigh, what, one-nineteen? If that? I met the leader of the wolves. He's like a professional wrestler." That almost caused Buffy to giggle, given that she was calling this guy 'Gorilla Monsoon'. "Sounds like a load of -"

"Lieutenant!" Columbo had jumped in between Buffy and the other cop. They stared at each other for a moment and the big man turned away. The little guy seemed to deflate as he exhaled, then turned back toward her. "Okay... sorry about that. Back to your report. In your own words, Miss Summers, could you tell us what happened tonight?"

Buffy took a deep breath and let it out, trying to present the image of someone caught up in something bigger than she was. "Sure. I was coming home from the CVS. I needed, like, some shampoo, and a couple of, like, razors and a toothbrush. You know, regular stuff. Oh, and some yogurt. Its healty, you know." She flashed the cops a dazzling smile. It had been easy to slip into her Malibu Barbie mode. She even began adding the upward inflection to the ending of her sentences, the one that made everything a Valley Girl said sound like a question. As camouflage went, it had always been more effective than anyone would have ever believed.

"Anyway, I was walking back to the stairs when I, like, noticed these two people standing by the side of the road next to that SUV over there." Buffy pointed toward the car she'd dumped Blake and the vampire into. "They didn't seem to be bothering anyone, just talking, so I ignored them. Not my business, y'know? So I had just started up the stairs when they got in my face."

"What do you mean by 'got in your face', Miss Summers?" Columbo asked.

"I mean, they, like, got all pushy. Said I had to come see, like, this vampire guy. The master of the city, or something. When I said, like, I'm too tired and if he wanted to talk to me, he could come by tomorrow. Then they started yelling like I had to go with them. And I was like, yeah, right, I'm not going anywhere with you two, and it pissed them off. The big guy, you know, the vampire? He got in front of me and knocked my stuff out of my hand. And I told him, if any of it broke, he'd have to replace it. When I got around him, he, like, grabbed my shoulders. So I, like, totally leopard punched him down the stairs."

"Leopard – I was under the impression you were a werewolf, Miss Summers. Are you a leopard, or a wolf?" Gorilla Monsoon looked confused.

"Its a karate move, duh! I'm, like, a black belt." Buffy rolled her eyes at him, playing up her fake exasperation.

"A black belt?"

"Duh! My dad, like, had me in martial arts classes since I was, like, fifteen. He was, like, dedicated making sure I could, like, defend myself against bad guys." She rolled her eyes again. "Guess it payed off, huh?"

"Okay," Columbo said, writing in his notebook. "And this leopard punch is a martial arts move, then."

"Right. Here, I'll show you." She stood up on the stairs and shoo'ed the cops back a step, then held up her right hand. The tips of her fingers were folded down toward her palm, and her thumb was tucked close. "First, you, like, hold your hand like this, okay? Then you punch with your hand out, as hard as you can, like this." She did a slow-motion demonstration of the standard leopard punch. "You actually hit them with, like, the bottom of your hand," she added, tapping on the heel of her palm with her other hand.

Gorilla Monsoon was scowling at her. "Let's get back on track. What happened after you knocked the vampire down the stairs?"

"Oh, well, the black-haired girl, like, pulled a gun and, like, shot at me."

"She shot at you and missed?" The scowl deepened.

"Duh, I'm still here, right? I ducked and, like, ran at her. I'm actually pretty fast when I put my mind to it." Buffy nodded at nothing. "I got in real close and, like, knocked the gun away from her, then, like, grabbed her. Used her own cuffs on her."

Columbo was nodding again. "When did you, ah, crush the guns?"

"Oh that. Yeah, that was, like, an instinct or a reflex or something. I just, like, didn't want to get shot at." Buffy nodded at nothing again.

The cops looked at each other. Columbo shrugged and Gorilla Monsoon nodded back at him. "Miss Summers, did Marshall Blake ever identify herself as a federal officer, or claim she had a warrant for your arrest?"

"Nope!" Buffy popped the 'p' and grinned. "I did, like, tell her that a vampire trying to kidnap me could get executed for it. She laughed, though. Like, she didn't care at all."

Columbo was still writing. "She laughed? Do you know why?"

"The vampire said it would be hard to get him executed since the girl was the executioner. He, like, said it like it was a big joke." Buffy shook her head. "Its like, you know in the movies, there's a good cop who's all honest and dedicated to, like, protecting people, and then there's the corrupt cop who is in the pocket of the Mafia?"

Columbo nodded vaguely, but Gorilla Monsoon kept scowling.

"Right, so she's like that. The Vampire Executioner, I mean. She's, like, in bed with the monsters." Buffy forced her eyes to widen. "Oh, hey! Is what I heard true? Is she really, like, the vampire king's honey? You don't think she's, like, really in bed with him, do you?"

At that statement, Columbo started coughing, like he was trying to suppress a laugh. Gorilla Monsoon's eyes narrowed. He wasn't laughing. Quite the opposite.

"Miss Summers, if we could get back to your statement. Did they say anything about why they wanted to take you to see the Master of the City?"

"They said something about how, like, I was in his authority or jurisdiction or something, and, like, how it was rude of me to just move to Saint Louis without, like, getting his permission first. Like he has some say over where I can live or something." Buffy faked a huff. "I'm from Los Angeles. I even went to college before I had to drop out! I'm not stupid! I know my rights. I can live where I want."

"You know your rights. That's great." Columbo chuckled.

"Absolutely. Its like, I think this Master guy thinks he's government or something, but really he's like the Godfather. You know, a crime boss with lots of muscle? He thinks, like, he can push people around. But I don't push well."

Gorilla Monsoon growled. "Obviously not. And you're the Big Bad Wolf now. You've got your own crime family to look after, right? Barzini to his Corleone?"

"Who?" Buffy didn't have to fake cluelessness this time. She really didn't get the reference. She thought about it for a minute. "Wait, you mean the pack? No, they're just trying to get along, like most people."

"Sure." Gorilla Monsoon turned away slightly, addressing Columbo. Buffy pretended not to listen, but it was almost impossible, given how close the two men were standing. "Zebrowski, make sure the crime scene team goes over every square inch of this alley. Get ahold of the security tapes. I want this made priority down at the labs. I swear if those fucking geeks put up roadblocks because this involves werewolves..."

"Sure, Dolph. I'll take care of it." The smaller detective turned to Buffy with a smile. "Thank you for your time, Miss Summers. I'm sorry you went through this. Please try to have a good evening."

Buffy waited until the cops were at least 20 feet from her before gesturing to Jamil and Shang-Da. She pointed at both of them, then pointed up at the apartment, then tapped her wrist as if she was wearing a watch.

Both men nodded. She climbed up the stairs to wait for her two bodyguards to arrive so they could talk.

**XxxxxxX**

Buffy stepped back, opening the door wider to allow the two werewolves inside. Neither men noticed her lack of verbal invitation. For that matter, neither did she; it was merely force of habit, even after nearly a century of not having a door to open for people.

"Make yourself comfortable," Buffy called over her shoulder as she entered her kitchen. She began pulling the erstwhile purchases from the plastic bags and laying things out on the counter. "I'd offer you something to drink, but all I have is tapwater, and even then you'd have to drink it right out of the sink. I don't have any dishes or anything yet."

"We're fine." Shang-Da smiled at her, and Jamil nodded. Jamil sat down on the couch, while Shand-Da perched on the only chair in the apartment's living area. "Um. So, we heard what you said to the cops."

"About what happened? Yeah. That was the long and the short of it." Buffy shrugged. She ran some water over her hands, and shook them in the air to help dry them. "Anita Blake and her pet vampire showed up to drag me off to the Master of the City, and I didn't want to be dragged." The two men tensed for a moment. "What?"

"Jean-Claude isn't going to like that much, Buffy." Jamil shrugged. "He doesn't it when people challenge him."

"Yeah, well, he should get used to it. I don't play well with authority. Especially snooty pushy authority that thinks it doesn't have to treat people decently." Buffy sat down on the couch next to her Skoll. Unconsciously, Jamil extended a hand and put it on her shoulder. The action surprised Buffy for a moment, but decided to let it go.

"Just sayin', he might send someone else over tonight. Or maybe even show up himself. We can stick around – "

"No. That's okay. I'll be fine. I'm fairly sure the cops are going to leave someone outside just to keep an eye on the place. And I really should try and get some sleep. I've got to be at the bookstore tomorrow. My first day at the new job." Buffy perked up at the thought. "I think I'm going to like working there, and it'll be just what I need to start putting my life back together."

"Putting your life back together? That's intriguing yet cryptic." Shang-Da laughed, and after a moment, Buffy joined him.

"You have no idea." The laughter tapered off. "I lost my sister, my mother, and the closest thing I ever had to a father..." Her voice trailed off. The men were silent as she stared into space. After a moment, she shook herself. "Huh. Hey! No spacing out, right. New day, new life."

Shang-Da and Jamil exchanged a look. Each shrugged at each other. "Sure," Shang-Da nodded. "If you need to talk to someone, though, you know." He shrugged again.

"Sure. Yeah. I can turn to the family. Absolutely." Buffy smiled and wiped at her eyes. "Okay, well, you two take off. I'm going to investigate my new bed." She followed them to the door and held it for them, but before they disappeared into the night, she remembered. "Oh! Wait! Did you get the word out for tomorrow night? I want to get the entire meet and greet with the pack over with as soon as possible. After that, we can start seeing what 'life as usual' looks like."

"We got the word out. No worries, boss. Sylvie told me she's going to guarantee everyone will be there." Jamil leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. "Sleep well."

Buffy waited until they'd reached the bottom of the stairs before shutting her door. She locked it behind her, turned off the lights, and fled to the meager comfort of the bedroom. She knew that she really didn't need to sleep anymore, but sometimes she _wanted _to sleep. Sleep felt good, after all. Riley – she remembered him fondly, if a bit regretfully – had been the one to teach her that sleep was maybe the second best thing you could do in a bed.

_**HUMAN**_

_**FRAIL**_

_**USELESS**_

Buffy sighed. _Live with it. Whatever we are now, I want to at least pretend to be a human being, okay? Can you give me that much? Can you? We're going to be together for all of eternity, so you might as well get used to my little quirks. I occasionally want to sleep just to sleep. _Buffy waited for some response from the entity in the back of her head, but it was silent.

Buffy undressed, enjoying the feeling of the sheets and the weight of the blanket on her nude form. Within minutes she was asleep.

**XxxxxxX**

Jean-Claude raged.

In his hand, the phone cracked and bent, its plastic casing shattering under his immense strength. For hours, he sat in his office waiting for Anita and Asher to arrive with this interloper. This renegade animal who had dared depose his puppet. Who had dared to interfere with his control over the wolves of Saint Louis. The moment the three arrived, Jean-Claude was going to make this upstart newcomer regret the day she was born. He would impale her on the force of his personal power, batter her into submission, and then he was going to force this _putain de loupe-garou _to bind herself to him as payment for her arrogance.

The new wolf-queen had dared, in front of everyone, declare that none of _**her**_ wolves –as if wolves weren't his animal to call – would answer to him or any other vampire any longer. The word of this 'proclamation' had reached him almost as quickly as word of of her defeating Richard in the first place had.

Jean-Claude would have laughed at the ridiculousness of such a thing, had someone – one of the lesser vampires in his Kiss – had noticed, and noticed quickly, how deserted the Circus was, with none of the werewolves present. It was one of Rafael's rats that had finally informed him of the cause. This, this unknown _girl_ had ordered such a thing – that the wolves no longer answered to their master – and just like that, as if she was the final authority and not Jean-Claude – all of the werewolves who normally could be found working here and there in the Circus and the catacombs beneath it had forgotten just who their proper master was and had deserted the Circus en masse.

As he waited, and waited, Jean-Claude stewed in his own anger. The longer it took for his petite and his second to return with the girl, the more angry he had grown. Finally, his rage had peaked and Jean-Claude's plans for the girl grew darker. More absolute. This newcomer, a mere girl if the rumors he had heard were true, threatened to overturn the very power structure that kept him Master of his city. He needed a puppet wolf in place, if for no other reason than to act as a pawn in Jean-Claude's multi-layered schemes to acquire and retain more and more power for himself. Someone new, someone out of Jean-Claude's control, was too potentially damaging to everything to allow to continue to exist.

It was simple. The girl would submit, and she would submit willingly. That would be the ultimate vengeance on her. She would bind herself or she would die. There was no other option. He wouldn't even allow her to flee Saint Louis. No, the time for her to flee ended when she dared depose his wolf-slave, Richard. Jean-Claude would teach her what the truth meaning of 'animal to call' meant.

He sat at his desk, waiting. Simmering. Stewing in his own rage. An hour became two. Two became four. And he'd become angrier and angrier.

And then the telephone had rung. It was the attorney Jean-Claude had on retainer, calling on behalf of Anita. Anita, who had called the attorney from the depths of the Saint Louis County jail. Jean-Claude dropped the shattered remains of the phone and began yelling for someone – ANYONE – to attend him.

**XxxxxxX**

The Hunter of All opened the eyes of the shell it had worn for nearly a century. It waited for an undetectable breath-length to see if the mortal mind that normally drove the shell would notice, but there was no indication that it had. The Old One had scoffed at the idea of voluntarily giving up control of one's shell, and now was amazed that the mortal mind had actually done it.

Sineya got up from the nest and found itself inextricably wanting to stretch. Such a sensation was new to it. Most of the sensations pouring in through the sensory organs of the shell were new to it, if the truth were told, and the Old One had no concept of deceit and therefore no concept of lying. The cave in which the mortal mind had nested was drab to the Old One's eyes, but it was no expert on caves.

It drove the shell to the entrance of the cave and loosened the fastenings keeping it from easily opening. The half-moon was high over the city. The Queen of Beasts stood, staring at the sky. It was a shade of gray clouded over by waste light from the surrounding metropolis, and utterly foreign to the shining darkness that Sineya was used to. The sight entranced the Old One.

For a being that was beyond such concepts as 'immortal' and 'eternal', anything new was fascinating. The feel of the breeze on the shell's naked flesh was new. The pressure on the shell's paws from the dead plant material that made up the platform in front of the cave's entrace was new. Everything was new. The Old One spread its vast attention to the entire surrounding environment. For the most part, the environment was empty. There were two of the human muck, sitting in a shadowed vehicle, close to the entrance of the alley. A feral predator, small in comparison to the shell Sineya wore, was stalking a rodent along the base of the building. The Old One expanded its senses to past the nearest causeway...

And it was thus how it found the interloper. Sineya turned the shell's head and eyes to stare at the being that stood in the shadows at the end of the road between the buildings. It was clear to the Hunter that the being thought it was stealthy, but nothing could merely hide from the Hunter of All. It was a Revenant. Not quite this human muck the mortal mind was so concerned with, but certainly nothing special. Just another mortal. Boring. Not new. The only thing interesting about it was the spark of shining darkness it held inside its shell.

A rival to the mortal mind Sineya shared the shell with, perhaps?

This could get interesting. Without Sineya being aware that it was doing it, it caused the shell to smile. It was a wide smile, wider than what most mortal beings would consider sane, and it was a smile filled with fangs and death. But it was a smile.

Without further thought, Sineya returned the shell to the nest and relinquished control over it. It contemplated the existence of this new factor in events. The Hunter of All had no idea what it meant, but the fact that the spark of the Shining Darkness existed in this world at all was intriguing. The Old One decided to let events happen as they may, curious to see what developed.

**XxxxxxX**

_**September 29, 1961**_

_**Spetsai, Greece**_

_Luther Black stood before the assembled men and women and annointed them with the names by which they would be known in the Inner Circle of his cult: Moloch, Belial, Astaroth, Asmodeus, Belphegor, Baal. Satan, Chanan, Adramelek, Lilith. And for himself, he took the name The Edomite. He held the convocation in an ancient villa once owned by a Venetian wine merchant, when Venice was an independent city-state. Three continents met at the Mediterranean Sea, which the ancient cartographers had placed at the center of the known world. It seemed an appropriate location for the first meeting of the newly recruited leadership of his cult. His reborn cult had evolved. It was still posing as a cult of demon worshipers, and the rank and file still mostly took part for the shock value. But between the tourists and himself he placed the Inner Circle._

_Already, over the last ten years, his cult had grown to twice the size it held back in the 1930s. It was now so large that Luther Black couldn't directly oversee all of its operations. Furthermore, the Inner Circle would give him an extra layer of insulation from being discovered by law enforcement. The world had changed, after all. The supernatural, once operating in the shadows, was beginning to step into the light of day. The Cold War waged between the US and the Soviet Union and their respective allies had created an all-pervasive community of intelligence agencies that could easily discover and destroy his agenda. Black knew that he had to protect himself and his identity if he was going to reach his true goals, and his Inner Circle was part of that purpose._

_With the initiation of the Inner Circle complete, Luther Black could step back into the shadows. He retired to the Thirteenth Floor, his recently completed sanctum sanctorum, known to no one but himself and his mind-controlled servants. For the next decade, he would only leave that place if matters were important enough to demand his personal involvement._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime nor stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author.

**Author's Note the Second:** I am still writing! I'm not dead yet! Its very slow-going, but at least the words are coming. So, I'm walking again with the aid of a cane (and my son Zachary got me this absolutely pimped out, hand-carved teak cane made by a Kenyan craftsman named Andrew Mutiso who is a true master of his chosen craft.

I'm never going to be 100% recovered, but I'm as recovered as I can get. And here's to hoping the writing gets easier. Nearly dying did wonders for Stephen King. My own experience nearly stoppered my creative urges. But here I am, back at it. Wish me luck.


	6. The Sound of Her Wings

**The Sound of Her Wings**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Magic grants no freedoms, friend pupil. Everything it buys **must** be paid for. " – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**March 18, 1968**_

_**The Island of Pohnpei**_

_**Caroline Islands Group, South Pacific Ocean**_

_Deep in the jungle that overgrew the Pohnpei, a volcanic island in a distant, almost forgotten part of Micronesia, Luther Black spoke the words of his spell, its harsh syllables reverberating across the islands. He stood in the center of a ruined city, once named by man Nan Madol. The city had once stood proudly, its walls of black basalt shining in the moonlight, but now they were vine-covered and mossy._

_While Black spoke, winds blew around him with the force of a monsoon, and on nearby islands long-dormant volcanoes erupted, magma and ash fountaining into the air. Tsunamis rushed away from the island and crashed on nearby shores, flooding towns and cities and taking the corpses of the drowned out to sea._

_Luther held the Basilisk Orb In his hands, and as he spoke the relic pulsed with power. It tapped into the mystic energy that had been gathering at Nan Madol for millennia, providing Black with the might he needed to cast his spell. No human had spoken these arcane words since mythic times, when the last age of legendary heroes had ended. The spell was a divination of monstrous and terrible power, for its caster not only glimpsed the potential future, but chose from all possible futures and made one a certain reality, however unlikely it would its coming to pass. The caster of the spell took time itself and shaped it to his own desire, and once the spell was completed, no force in Heaven or on Earth could alter it._

_As the sun set on the third day of Luther Black's casting, he chanted the last words and began to set in place the last event of the future he desired above all others: December 31, 1996, the day he would call forth the Kings of Edom with his final words, sacrificing his own life in order to resurrect himself to stand beside them as one of them._

_Though the military forces of the United States protected the island, it could not prevent Luther Black and his cult from taking over – at least not long enough to prevent Black from working his spell. The US Navy had a single base on the island chain, and the inhabitants of it had little in the way of protection from the invaders. The assembled cultists summoned a host of malevolent spirits, and these shaped bodies for themselves from ocean sludge, seaweed, coral, and volcanic rock. Shambling up out of the depths of the ocean, they spirits eliminated US military personnel at the naval base, while the human cultists took over local control of the island and severed communications with the outside world. With the island under his cult's control, Luther Black emerged from hiding. He only needed to hold the island for three days, just long enough to complete his spell._

_In this, Luther Black failed._

_Just as the spell neared completion, members of the United States Marine Corps stormed the beaches while agents of the Office of Strategic Intelligence fought their way to the ruins of Nan Madol and confronted Luther Black. One of them, Agent Zachary Harris, managed to wrest the Basilisk Orb away from Black and threw it, and himself, into the heart of a raging volcano in order to finally destroy the otherwise invulnerable artifact. Luther Black escaped the island, lifted into the storm that raged above the island._

_The fierce winds tore at his robes as he twirled and spun up into the sky. Blood dripping from his clawed fingers, he laughed maniacally at the men who had thwarted him, but he could not see his enemies. Blood ran from the empty sockets where he had scratched out his own eyes when the spell was abruptly and involuntarily ended. In a fit of madness, Luther Black had blinded himself – but only after seeing far more than a mortal man was ever meant to see. He had witnessed a future where his desire had been fulfilled. He had witnessed the events that would have to come to pass, the tasks he would have to accomplish._

_In his vision of the future, Luther Black had seen a great many things – events and people that he must recruit and cause to occur. But underlying all of this was a single insight that changed everything. As he sifted through the possible futures, searching for the one that would bring him all he desired, he came to understand that the Kings of Edom would grind him under their heels like any other piece of muck if he successfully freed him. He realized that there was no bargaining with these beings._

_He could expect no reward for his efforts other than madness and death – and there was no way to simply siphon power from them. The only way to achieve his goal was o force them to perform his blasphemous apotheosis. He would force these godlike beings to his will!_

_The first task that lay before him was to murder his own Inner Circle..._

**XxxxxxX**

**October 9, 1996**

**Saint Louis, Missouri**

Buffy let out a slow, aggrieved sigh. It was official: being stuck at the DMV, trying to get a driver's license, was just this side of hell. Oh sure, it wasn't as bad as being stuck in a big giant fishbowl for eighty years, but it might just be worse than that time she got stuck in that Hell-dimension with all the factories and the slavery.

She was sure that getting huffy was the correct reaction to her current situation. Buffy looked around at the crowd of people, all waiting as she was to be called up to the service desk, and all just as bored as she was. There were probably sixty people here waiting, and they all had that look of desperate misery on their faces. She glanced up at the red "Now Serving Number..." counter. It read 37. Buffy looked down at the little pink piece of paper she'd pulled from the dispenser. It read "62."

"Urgh." She gritted her teeth. The realization that there was nothing to be done about it caused her to let out an aggrieved sigh once more. It was all her boss's fault. If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't be here at the driver's license office. Even worse, after she finished here, she'd have to head to another government building to talk to people about birth certificates!

Buffy had arrived to work early. She was still dependent on the bus or walking for transportation, and she still didn't have any real clue how long it would take to get from her new apartment to Skylight Books yet. She waited nearly half an hour for Larry to show up. The man had been pleasant, but acerbic, when he greeted her, and he seemed a bit surprised she was there, but welcomed her presence nonetheless.

And then he'd inconveniently insisted on submitting some silly paperwork to the IRS for tax purposes, and for that he needed her social security number. Had, in fact, demanded to see a copy of her Social Security card. Nicely demanded, but demanded.

Naturally, not being originally from this dimension, Buffy didn't have one.

Six seconds into her halting and obviously fake excuse for why she had no Social Security card, and no driver's license either, Larry interrupted, shushed her, and told her to take the day off and get a copy of her card and all the rest of the identification she would need. She was to be back to start work the next day.

Turned out getting the identification was going to be easier said than done. If she didn't already like Larry – despite being a grumpy-gus he was sort of cute in a weird, geeky way, and he smelled nice, sort of like basil and oregano and pizza sauce – and if she wasn't already looking forward to working for him at the bookstore...

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_Shut up, you. I'm not talking to you._ She tapped her fingers on the book she brought with her. In Larry's defense he had thrust it into her hands as she was heading out the door. He'd insisted she take something to read, which was of the good, since he obviously knew what the line would be like. She'd resisted reading the book for the first ten – she glanced at the clock – _Oh my God, thirty! _minutes she'd been waiting so far, but now was thinking it might be a good thing to start on the thing.

The cover art told her almost nothing about the story. Buffy read the blurb at the top of the back cover to herself. "Helen Fielding is one of the funniest writers in Britain, and Bridget Jones is a creation of comic genius. Nick Hornsby. Wonder who Nick Hornsby is." She kept reading. "Huh. Romantic comedy. Okay."

She alternated reading the novel – which she found okay, but not amazing, but then she was really not that big a reader – and staring around the crowd. She could tell that some progress was being made, if for no other reason than some of the people she remembered being there when she first made her survey of the place were either talking to the clerks behind the counter or were gone. But it was still slow-going. At the hour and a half mark, the Now Serving clock had only hit number 49.

Three hours in, at just past noon, Buffy's number was finally called. She approached the empty service window, smiling genially as she went. "Hi there!"

The woman on the other side of the counter didn't smile, but she wasn't being off-putting, either. "Hi. How may I help you?"

_And this is where is gets interesting._Buffy wasn't sure how well she could pull this off. "Yes, I need to get a driver's license, um -" a quick glance at the name placard on the woman's desk "- um, Phyllis. And I was hoping you could help me." She gave the woman her widest smile and tried to appear friendly and non-threatening.

Phyllis the DMV Worker returned her smile curtly and nodded. Then she looked Buffy in the eye, and it was all the opportunity that Buffy needed. In only a moment, Buffy wrapped Phyllis's mind in her inexorable and eternal power. Phyllis's face went slack and her eyes emptied. A thin, dark trickle of blood seeped from one nostril.

The puppet that had once been Phyllis Barnes, clerk for the Missouri Department of Motor Vehicles, began to type. Quickly, and with perfect accuracy. The entire thing took less than ten minutes, including the clumsily taken license photo. It was a happy and relieved Buffy who left the DMV. As she left, she grinned at her new license. It was still warm to the touch, fresh from the processor as it was.

"Thank you, Phyllis." Buffy considered her puppet for a moment. "You look tired. Maybe you should go the ladies. Splash your face or something?" Absently, Buffy released her control on the other woman. The picture on the license was her camouflaged form, naturally. She wasn't blonde, but the long curly reddish brown hair she was sporting along with the amber-colored eyes went well with the cafe-au-lait skin. It was a good look.

Even better, she confirmed she could pull this off. Now for the Social Security office.

**XxxxxxX**

Anita Blake scratched at the back of her hand absently, not really paying attention to what she was doing. She was trying her hardest to concentrate on what the prosecutor was saying, and what her own attorney was saying in response, but it was beginning to become difficult. The _ardeur _was rising, and if she didn't get the hell out of jail soon, it was going to become a real problem.

"As far as the kidnapping charges go, its a he-said-she-said situation. You and I both know that all I'll really have to do is point out that Anita Blake is a Federal Marshall and that her supposed victim is a werewolf." Her attorney, Jeffrey Something-Or-Other, said.

"From what I hear, the Marshall service is tossing her over the side. You're not going to be able to pain her as a hero if her own people don't want her anymore." That was news to Anita. She hadn't talked to her regional supervisor yet. She knew there would be fall-out from her arrest – no law enforcement department liked it when their own people got arrested, after all – but she didn't think she'd be in danger of losing her credentials as a Marshall

The defense attorney, on the other hand, didn't even blink. "Even so, the security tapes show nothing but a fist-fight that your 'victim' clearly wins easily. The jury will just love the part about the heroic law enforcement officer standing up to the rampaging monster."

Anita frowned at this. Even if she hated the Summers woman, Anita wouldn't want her defense to be built on prejudice against lychanthropes. "Hey, I don't -"

"Anita, please. Let me talk." Jeffrey Something smiled at her then turned his attention back to the prosecutor. "As far as the attempted murder charge, its clear that Miss Summers was charging at Marshall Blake – "

"_**Miss **_Blake."

"Ahem. Fine. She was charging at _Miss _Blake when _Miss_ Blake shot at her, so I could probably make a good case for self-defense."

"Ms." Anita blinked and shook her head. "Its _Ms._, not _Miss_."

Both attorneys ignored her and went right back into their argument. "Oh come on! Combined with the attempted kidnapping, her intent was pretty clear. Miss Summers will testify to that fact. We've got footage of the vampire grabbing her!"

"Yes, but that's the vampire. One monster attacking another? I'm betting most of the jury won't care either. Its clear that he was out of control."

"Wait just one fucking minute! You're not throwing Asher under the bus like that! Jean-Claude wouldn't want -"

"Miss Blake, I am your attorney. While the Master of Saint Louis is paying my bill, he is not my client, you are. As such, I'm doing what I can to defend you. Now _**shut. Up.**_"

Jeffrey Something watched Anita's mouth bob open and closed a couple of times, but eventually Anita slacked back in her chair. She was visibly sweating, alternating hot and cold, and was getting antsy, like there were worms crawling under her skin. She didn't have the strength to argue.

After a moment, her attorney turned back toward the prosecutor. "I look forward to seeing you put an out-of-the-closet werewolf on the stand, Ms. Denbrough. Cross-examining her will be fun." Jeffrey tapped his pen on his legal pad. "Let's be honest, Ms. Denbrough, you're going to have a hard time selling your victim as a helpless little girl when the security tapes show her kicking vampire ass before dodging a bullet and crushing two pistols in her fist. And you'd better believe I'm going to produce those guns before the jury."

"You're an asshole, Jeff. You're really an asshole. " Jeffrey Something just grinned in response, and Lauren Denbrough, the prosecutor, fumed. Finally, "What do you want, Jeff?"

"What are you offering?"

"What. Do you. Want." Denbrough said through gritted teeth. Her eyes met Anita's for a moment, and it was very clear she held the Executioner in utter contempt. Anita wondered what was bringing on the hostility.

"Malicious Mischief and Unlawful Discharge of a Firearm. Suspended with a fine."

"You're joking."

"You seriously think you can get better than that?"

Denbrough snorted through her nose. "I certainly think I can get better than a two year suspended sentence with probation in exchange for three Class A Felonies." The prosecutor's eyes narrowed. "We drop Attempted Murder and Kidnapping. She pleads to Assault 1 and the weapons charge. Fifteen to twenty."

"Lauren, there were no injuries, so it can't be Assault 1." Jeffrey Something tapped on his pad again. How about we meet in the middle. Drop Kidnapping and Attempted Murder. She pleads to Assault 2 and the weapons charges. She gives up her licenses. Attends mandatory therapy. Five years suspended with ten years probation."

Anita had stopped paying attention to what was going on. She felt the links between herself and Damian activate – but Damian had already died for the day, and she was sucking fumes. Anita felt the _ardeur's _force jump from Damian to Nathaniel involuntarily. Through the links, she felt the were-leopard collapse in a heap in the kitchen. Vaguely, she hoped that someone was there to help him, but she was lost in the feeling of the _ardeur_, sucking energy from her pomme de sang that Nathaniel simply didn't have at the moment.

She leaned back in her chair, and her head lolled backward so far that she found herself staring at the ceiling. And then, abruptly, her mind was filled with Richard. ~_Anita! Anita, are you okay? What are you doing? Do you need help? Take the power from me if you need it, Anita. Anita?~ _Anita immediately began to feel better, but it was still not enough. She brought her head down in time to meet Lauren Denbrough's sneer.

"Fine. Assault 2, the weapons charge, and she surrenders her licenses and goes to see a shrink." Denbrough shoot her head. "But... I want her in rehab with regular drug testing as a condition of her probation. I mean – Jesus, Jeff, look at her! What the hell is she on? She looks like a crack-head."

Anita could feel her attorney's embarrassment, but was too wound up in suppressing the _ardeur_ to worry about it. "Fine, we'll include a stipulation to mandatory rehab and drug testing. If I could have a moment with my client?"

The prosecutor nodded, still looking grim, but she left Anita alone with Jeffrey Something. Anita's head lolled again. It wasn't as bad as it had been, since Richard was helping her, but it wasn't the same thing as just throwing down and fucking Nathaniel or Micah until her toes curled.

"Anita," Jeffrey Something began. He leaned toward her and extended a hand. She jerked back, not wanting to spark anything. It was bad enough she was feeding from Nathaniel and draining Richard from a distance.

"Don't – don't touch me right now. Not safe." She shrugged her shoulders, trying to loosen up. He withdrew, and she relaxed, but only a little.

"You look like a smack-addict who hasn't shot up in days, Anita. What the hell is going on?"

"It's a – a magic thing. Just a magic thing. I'll be okay." _But Nathaniel and Richard and Damien might not be, _she thought to herself.

"Are you capable of making informed decisions right now? Because it looks like you're drawn out on something."

"No, no, no, I'm – I'm fine." Anita pressed upward on her jaw; her teeth had started to chatter together. "I'll be good as soon as I can get out of here."

"That might not be for a couple of hours. Maybe not even until tomorrow. Did you hear the deal?"

She shook her head. "Not all of it. Some of it. Um. You got her to drop the Kidnapping charge?"

"Yeah, and the attempted murder charge. You're going to have to plead guilty to Second Degree Assault. They're also hanging Unlawful Discharge of a Firearm on you. The good thing is, I kept you out of jail. That said, you're going to be on probation until 2006."

"Plead guilty. I'll be a convicted felon. The Marshalls are going to kick me out."

"They already have. I guess you missed that part, too." The attorney shrugged. "You'll have to do therapy. Anger management classes. And drug rehab."

"Drug rehab?" Anita was confused. She normally didn't take any drug stronger than Advil. "What do I need drug rehab for?"

"Did you just, like, completely miss the entire conversation? Christ, Anita. What the fuck is up with you?" He took a deep breath and let it out slow. "Like I said, you look like you've been chasing the dragon and are now coming down from a high. Denbrough is insisting on the rehab. You're not going to be allowed to carry a gun anymore, but given that as of this morning you're not a Marshall, that might be that big a deal. You're going to have to surrender your license to execute, as well."

"Damn it!" Anita's vision went a bright red. _They were taking everything she was away. _"My entire life is over. Just over. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?" She had started shivering from the cold, all the while feeling like she was swimming in a hot tub.

_~Anita? Do you need help?~ _She shrugged the mental question from Richard off.

"Hey, you're still young. You can come back from this. At least you're not in jail." Jeff Something shrugged. "That's got to count for something."

She stared at him for a long moment. "I'm going to kill her. I mean it. I'm going to find that bitch and kick the shit out of her."

The attorney face-palmed. "That would be a stupendously stupid idea at this point. You do that, and this deal will go away and you'll be in prison for ten years. You want that?"

Anita said nothing. She needed to talk to Jean-Claude. "When am I getting out?"

"Depends on Denbrough. Might be as early as tonight. I'll talk to her and we'll."

Anita swallowed hard, but she nodded. There was no help for it. The cops didn't need to know about the _ardeur_, and there was no way she could get away with playing a little slap-and-tickle with a guard and not have it plastered all over the evening news.

"Just hurry, Jeff."

**XxxxxxX**

Peter Clawicz stood on the street corner, just barely in the shadow of the furniture shop. He had left the woman who gave birth to him (he never thought of the woman who gave birth to him as his mother – his real mother was the dark, floating beauty who appeared to him from time to time to talk to him, to love him, and to sometimes give him instructions; the other woman was just meat) in the furniture shop, looking at antique chairs. The boy licked at the ice cream cone purchased for him by the meat – it was candy cane. He liked candy cane ice cream. As Peter licked at his treat, he stared at the restaurant across the street.

"Do you see it, Peter?" The boy looked up at the woman standing in the shadows next to him. Peter had never heard the phrase 'photo-negative' before, and wouldn't have understood it if he had. Demoiselle Nocturne, Peter's real mother, was exactly that. Her skin was a grayish black, with bluish black hair. Her eyes sparked with pure white pupils surrounded by gray irises, embedded in night-black sclerae. She was as naked as the day she was – well, 'born' was certainly not the right word. Such things as Demoiselle Nocturne were not born, but sprang whole out of the depths of nightmare.

"I see the footsteps. There's a lot of footsteps." The boy took another lick of his ice cream and smiled briefly as his real mother gave him a cold caress. Other people – other meat – walked by where he was standing, and other than a sudden feeling of cold, they took no notice of the woman's presence.

"Yes, there are. Our master felt a great surge of power, power that originated within the shining darkness. You remember what I said about the shining darkness, yes?" Peter nodded his head.

"Oh, my beautiful boy, that is wonderful." Demoiselle Nocturne gave the boy another caress. "Mother wants you to find the source of the footsteps and kill her. Do you understand, Peter?"

For a moment, the boy was confused. It was clear that the girl who had made the footsteps – and the ugly clown had reported, and Mother had confirmed, that the source was just a girl – had been touched by the Shining Darkness. Wasn't that a good thing? "But – I don't understand, mother. Shouldn't she help us? Help the master" For a bare second, Peter felt fear as his real mother's face clouded over in anger. But then the moment was gone again and everything was okay.

"No, Peter. She is a rival to our Master's power, and that cannot be allowed. So you will kill her, and then there will be no one who can stand in the Master's way. Won't that be fun?" Peter nodded his head again. Killing was always fun. "Good. Arlecchino will assist you. I'll be waiting for you when you are finished." Demoiselle Nocturne gestured toward the shadowy alley next to the furniture store, where the boy could barely make out the dirty form of Arlecchino skulking next to a trash dumpster. "Be good, my darling boy." With that, the form of the woman grew diffuse as she faded into the shadows of the building.

Peter went back to contemplating the restaurant. Behind him, he heard the ugly clown shuffle up toward him. "She's not there right now, Arlecchino. We'll wait for her. In the room above the restaurant."

The meat came out of the furniture store and began babbling in the stupid way she did. Something about getting away from him and leaving her son alone and yelling at the ugly clown. Peter turned to her and shook his head. "Shush. Go back to the hotel and wait. Be good, or you know what will happen." The woman stared at him, the expected look of terror on her face. He dismissed her with a glance and barely noticed when she climbed into the car and drove away.

For just a moment, Peter Clawicz was happy; he would cherish the look on the meat's face. It was good that the meat remembered to be afraid of him.

**XxxxxxX**

"Hey, Dolph, just got word from the DA's office. Denbrough has officially requested a Writ of Summary Judgment and an Execution Order for one Charles Gustave Asher de Chassiron." At Storr's blank look, Zebrowski elaborated. "You know... the vampire who went with Anita on her little wolf-hunting expedition?"

"Yeah, I expected that. Do you know which judge is making the review?"

"Judge Hand." Zebrowski rolled his eyes and leaned up against the doorjam.

"Huh. Guess its Denbrough's lucky day. Hand'll have the warrant to her by close of business. Wouldn't be surprised if he walks it directly to her office, even." Storr got up from his desk and turned to face the window. He looked out over Saint Louis and just watched the city for a while. "Might want to give Burke a call, give him a head's up. They're going to yank Anita's Marshall status right out from under her even if she gets clear of the charges. You heard anything about that yet, by the way?"

"Not yet."

"All right." Storr seemed to want to say something else, but hesitated. Zebrowski picked it up immediately.

"Something else?"

"Yeah, close the door and sit down, Larry." Storr motioned his second-in-command to a seat. He waited until the door was closed and the other man seated before he sat back down at his desk. Despite what the men who worked for him thought, Lieutenant Storr's first name wasn't "Adolph" – it was actually Rudolph – , and the man wasn't really a Nazi. He just had a quick and deep temper, and faced a lot of frustration over the course of his life, with very little avenues to get it out of his system. His friendship with Sergeant Zebrowski was a testament to that. The big man ran a hand over his eyes, rubbing down his face until it stopped on his chin. He sighed and let his hand drop. "You get any sleep since last night?"

Zebrowski shrugged. "I caught a two hour nap in the back of the locker room." That's where the unit kept the so-called "crash cots", a set of camp beds used when they needed to pull all-nighters. "How about you?"

"Not yet. I might go home for a couple of hours." Storr tapped a file on his desk. "Perry got anything new on the Webb murder?"

"Not that he's told me about. He's still waiting for some of the trace to come back from the lab. But you know how that goes. It can take up to a week."

Storr just nodded. "Okay. And how about this escaped demon. Have we heard anything that might tell us where it might be? I mean, you'd think if it was a demon it'd, I don't know, taken up residence and started possessing people or filling a church with cow-shit of somethin'."

"Tammy's been studying those books we found at the house. Tryin' to pin down just what we're dealing with. But there's been no strange activity. I mean, you know, stranger than usual." Zebrowski sighed. "And I'm telling you, Dolph, some of the things she's reading are really bugging the crap out of her. I mean, serious sick shit."

"How'd you mean?"

"Like human sacrifice and ancient evil and shit like that. Stuff right out of Edgar Rice Burroughs. You know, Cosmic Doom from beyond space?"

Storr snorted in amusement. "Yeah, I saw some of the movies. All those 'alien gods' with the unpronounceable names. Never got into it, myself. I was more into the adventure stories when I was a kid. Like Tarzan and Conan and stuff."

"I just bet. I can see you sitting under a tree reading one of Lovecraft's ape-man stories." Zebrowski laughed at the thought. Soon enough, though, both cops were silent. Time to bring up the elephant in the room.

"Fucking Blake." Storr shook his head. "We still have a fucking demon out there, plus these two murders we still haven't solved. All this work we've got In our laps, and what happens? Our monster expert goes and decides she'd rather be Frank Nitti instead of being Elliot Ness. The fuck was she thinkin'?"

"From what she says, this sort of thing is normal for her. Her boyfriend –" Zebrowski gave a little chuckle "- the Count von Count, apparently orders people around like that all the time."

"What do you mean, normal?"

Zebrowski shrugged. "From what I hear, he doesn't let any of the weirdos stay in his city unless either they sign on with him permanently or else pay him some sort of prize and then get the hell out of dodge quick. He doesn't like independents, apparently. And that's witches, vampires, weres, you name it."

"So whatshername – Summers – was right." Storr abruptly picked up his phone's receiver and punched a couple of numbers. "Hey, do me a favor. Call up the FBI guys down on Market Street. Ask them if they'd be willing to send one of their organized crime guys over to talk to us. Good, let me know."

When Storr put the phone back down, Zebrowski shot him a look. The big man shrugged. "Worth a shot. Maybe we're going about it all wrong. Maybe we really should be treating Dracula as if he was actually Don Corleone."

"You realize that if our boy Dracula is Vito Corleone, that makes Anita – what do you figure – Clemenza?"

"No." Storr's face froze as me made the realization. "No, it makes her Luca Brasi."

"Oh shit." Zebrowski caught on quick. He knew what it meant for Anita Blake to be the head vampire's enforcer. Then his eyes got really wide. "Fucking – and you said it last night. Barzini just took Luca Brasi off the board. So on top of this demon thing and the two murders, we might have a preternatural gang war coming!"

"Fuck. Now I've got a migraine." Storr rubbed his forehead. "I really hope you're just imagining things. I really do. That's the last thing we'd need, what with a possessed girl toting a demon around in her head and two – " Storr stopped himself. "Fuck. We've got a vampire dead on one hand, and we've got a were-boar dead on the other hand. Vampires vs. Lycanthropes. What sort of pull do you think the Big Bad Wolf has over the other shapeshifters? I mean, there's got to be, what four or give times as many wolves as there are anything else in this town, right?"

Zebrowski stopped cold and thought about it. "I got know idea how many there are, but yeah, there's more wolves than anything else. I think Anita – " he held up a hand at Storr's dark look, silencing any protest for now " – said that the wolves were the biggest group, followed by the hyenas, then the rats. After that, I can't remember. I know there were a lot of small groups but can't remember who fits where in terms of gang size. I know she said that the boars outnumber the leopards, and the leopards outnumber the lions and tigers and bears."

"Right. So if the wolves were throwing down against the vampires for control of the city – if Don Buffy of the Barzini Wolf Family has decided to make her move against Don Dracula of the Corleone Vampire family – maybe she had this vampire blood-pimp or whatever he was killed for some reason."

"Its a scary idea, but we don't have any evidence linking her to the crime, even second or third hand. Let's face it, we don't have anything linking anybody to the crime except our second victim."

"Yeah." Storr was quiet for a minute. "Okay, I'm going to keep Tammy researching this demon thing. I want you and Perry to check this Summers girl out. Find out as much as you can about her. Check on what the wolves in town have been doing. If they're going to war, they'd have to gear up for it, and I want to know if they have. Maybe we're seeing something that isn't there. But if not, I don't want to be caught with nothing but my dick in my hand." Storr chuckled.

"Dick in your hand?"

"Jeez, Zebrowski. Have you ever watched _The Godfather?"_

**XxxxxxX**

By the time Buffy had finished at the Social Security office, the sun had almost hit the horizon. She wasn't physically tired – she really wasn't sure she got physically tired anymore – but emotionally she was exhausted. All that sitting around made her hair hurt.

But now she was back home. She stepped off the bus and stared at the Lunatic Cafe from her position across Blandon Road for a moment. She weighed the options for dinner. Going out this late in the day to buy groceries vs. spending what little money she had on getting dinner inside the restaurant. The restaurant won.

Once on the other side of the street, though, she paused. There was a – smell wasn't the right word, but it wasn't too far off the mark, either. Like something rotten was present. But it wasn't really a smell, just a feeling. Buffy shook it off. She was hungry, she was tired, and she didn't want to put up with any weird stuff right now.

Without further delay, she headed for the entrance of the restaurant.

_Finished the book, that was of the good at least. And hey! Bright shiny legal documentation that will hold up under scrutiny, too!_ Buffy thought to herself as she crossed the street. "I need a car. Or a motorcycle. Even one of those scooters, even. Maybe a bicycle. On second thought, no, not a bike. No way to carry groceries and stuff on a bicycle." She sighed to herself. _Starting life over is hard._

_**FRUSTRATION**_

_**RULERSHIP**_

_**CONTROL!**_

_Sorry, but I don't want to rule the world from a throne of skulls, so stop suggesting it, loser. _Buffy snorted at the thought. _You're stuck with me forever, so you might as well get comfortable in my life. _Buffy waited for a reaction. _Okay? Do we have a deal?_

_**RESIGNATION**_

_Don't pout._ She shook her head at the way the internal dialogue was progressing. Seemingly every day, her understanding of the other entity's moods and whims was growing. On the one hand, it was a good thing; the more she understood about the thing sharing her shell –

Buffy stopped just before opening the door to the Cafe. _Shell? Where the hell did that come from?_

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_Right. Came from you. Got it._ Buffy stepped inside of the Cafe and smiled at the first waitress she saw. It was Paula from the night before. "Hey, Paula. I need a table. And can you bring me a diet coke?" The young girl, Paula, almost jumped in surprise at being addressed. She might have been a part of the pack, but she was clearly not one of the pack's leaders.

"Uh, sure. You're Buffy, right?" The waitress asked as she led Buffy toward the back. "That's what Shang-Da said. Sorry, we weren't really introduced last night."

"Right. I'm Buffy. And don't worry about it. I'm sure we'll get to know each other just fine." The restaurant was full of shifters again, but this time is was mostly werewolves. _Probably here to see the new boss._ The waitress seemed nervous, in a star-struck kind of way. Buffy was about to say something nice and encouraging when they reached the intended table. Richard, Sylvie, Jamil, and Shang-Da were all sitting in a corner booth, coffee cups in front of them. The four senior alphas in her new pack of wolves. They'd clearly been waiting for her to arrive.

"Ulfrana. We're glad you're finally here. How are you doing?" Sylvie asked.

They all had looks of expectation on their faces. It brought Buffy up short. "Oh. Hey, guys. Nice to see you." Buffy thought for a second. "Oh shit, we were doing that thing at the Lupanar. With the day I had I complete forgot. That's okay, I'm still up for it. Just, let me eat and kind of decompress. And to answer your question, I've been at the DMV all day. So you know..."

Sylvie nodded. Her smile was curt but not completely unfriendly. "Guys, how about you..."

The three men climbed out of the booth in order to allow Buffy to slide in so she was sitting next to Sylvie. Each nodded their head to her as she passed them. She ran one of her hands across their chests as she moved, but didn't put any juice into it. She wasn't looking to turn them into puppets. Just do some of that lycanthrope touchy-feely stuff. The men all leaned into her touch. Sylvie hadn't left her seat, but she too nodded to Buffy, and as Buffy slid into the booth accepted a welcoming touch from her new Ulfrana as well. Richard took up position to Buffy's right, with Shang-Da next to him on the outside. Jamil sat to Sylvie's left, also on the outside.

"Otherwise," Buffy continued as if they hadn't been interrupted. "I'm doing all right. Just got back from the driver's license office. Next step is buying a car, I suppose. Or maybe one of those scooter things." Buffy smiled at Paula as the waitress dropped off her soda and refilled the four coffees.

"Sounds like you're getting domestic." Jamil smiled at her. It was a very pretty smile, she decided, and she returned it with one of her own.

"I'm getting there. I still need to go get groceries and some personal items. Maybe do some furniture shopping. I'm definitely going to eventually need a television. And cable. Maybe you can help me out, sometime?" Jamil nodded without saying anything, but did smile at her again. Then Buffy caught Sylvie and Richard both smirking at her. Shang-Da was decidedly _not _looking at her.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing." Sylvie turned the smirk onto Jamil, who ducked his head. "Just wondering what the male form of 'Lupa' might be." At this, Jamil's coffee tried to come up through his nose.

"Okay, I'm missing something, obviously. Explain it to me later, okay?" Sylvie nodded. "So... you guys were waiting for me?"

"We were." Sylvie nodded back and sipped at her coffee. "Before we head out to the Lupanar, there's something that we need to talk about." Buffy noticed that Richard wasn't meeting anyone's eyes suddenly. "I want you to know this, Ufrana. I am not questioning your leadership. You are dominant, and I am your... well, I was Richard's Geri. But you left Richard alive. Custom sort of demands that when a Fenrir challenges the Ulfric for the top spot, its a fight to the death."

Buffy just stared with her mouth open. She whipped her head around to look at Richard, but he was very carefully studying the gain of the Formica tabletop. Jamil and Shang-Da were both looking at her in that "not saying I'm staring, but I'm staring" sort of way. "Wait... what?" She cast her thoughts at the entity sharing her head. _Is this true? Do they expect me to just kill the guy?_

_**DOMINANCE**_

_**CONTROL**_

_Yeah, but not necessarily killing. _Everyone around her, even the spectators sitting at other tables, seemed to flinch from her.

"Well fuck that!" Buffy blurted. "I don't just kill people for no reason. Richard fought as long as he had to and quit when he knew he was beat. Fuck this 'to the death' bullshit!" She shook her head. "Jesus... you know, for werewolves, you people sure as fuck know dick about how real wolves act!" She took a deep breath. "This might come as a shock to you people, but _real_ wolves don't kill each other to play dominance games. In fact, they rarely seriously injure each other. Because each member of the pack is too fucking valuable to waste in silly games." The other four nodded, visibly showing their submission. Buffy realized she was projecting her power and pulled it in.

"Okay. Sorry. Sorry." Buffy took a deep breath and counted to ten before letting it out. All around her, the various shifters seemed to calm. "Look, Richard's a strong alpha. If he was Ulfric, he was even stronger than you, Sylvie, and I'm not going to just throw him away to make a point."

The four of them sat there for a moment before Richard muttered something. "I, uh, I submitted to Sylvie. I don't want to be Geri."

"Fine." Buffy sipped her coffee, but it was lukewarm. She made a face, then gestured for Paula the Waitress. "Honey, just bring up a hot carafe and leave it here." Turning back to Richard, she continued. "Fine. You can be Freddy. I mean – Freki. Jesus, I hate... what language is that, anyway? German?"

"Norse." Jamil chuckled. "You know – Vikings?"

"I've only met two, actually. But okay. Norse then. Was this the only thing we needed to get straightened out before we meet the puppies tonight?"

"You're going to have to do something about Anita Blake." Sylvie shrugged. "I mean, more than you have. Officially, as Ulfrana, you're going to have to toss her out of the pack. She was Bolverk, and, uh, from what Jamil here tells me, you're going to be acting as your own. Besides, she attacked the new Ulfrana while working for an outsider. Technically, you could have her executed under pack law."

"So..." Buffy began slowly. "I guess Jamil and Shang-Da filled you in on last night's events, then?"

"Everybody heard what happened." Richard snorted. "Let's just say I found out the hard way. Jean-Claude isn't too pleased with you. He was already pissed about you having Anita arrested, but what really ticked him off was your order regarding nobody in the pack working for him."

"Why? What happened?" Buffy hadn't heard this part.

"Word got out to the wolves at the Circus that a new Wolf King had taken over, and had declared an embargo." Shang-Da said. "Embargo – hah. So anyway, they left the Circus in small groups, and a couple of them carried knews to Jean-Claude's other businesses. There was a mass walkout."

"All of the wolves left?"

"Most. Jean-Claude caught on before they could all get away, and he forced the ones who couldn't to stay."

_**INSULT**_

Buffy agreed with the voice in her head. The others at the table leaned toward her subconsciously. "You think he's going to hurt them?"

"He's going to hurt them and then blame it on you." Richard almost spat. "Oh, he's not going to directly torture them, he'll just make sure they're all in pain somehow, or frightened, or both, and he'll make sure they know that if you would just cooperate already and answer his summons, he wouldn't be doing this."

"'See what you made me do.' Its the standard justification of an abuser." Sylvie said. "What do you want to do about it?"

Buffy shrugged. "Well, I think what I want to do is slaughter every vampire in the city. Starting with Jean-Claude." She said it casually, and with the confidence of being able to do it. The casual manner in which she said it seemed to shock the four wolves.

"You're serious. Aren't you?" Richard just stared at her.

"Well, yeah." Buffy shrugged, as if it was the most casual idea in the world to have. "Not like it would be hard."

"There's a couple of things I can see going wrong with that plan." Richard said with an ironic laugh. "Not the least of which is that I'm still tied to Jean-Claude and Anita through the marks. He's either going to want to depose you and put me back in the catbird seat, or else bring you under his control by transferring the marks from me to you."

"Yeah, well, he's going to find it harder than he thinks to do that. Do me a favor Richard, and try and keep the rest of our people away from the blood-sucking crowd." She turned to Sylvie. "You know anybody on the inside who can get us a meeting with Count Chocula? I need to explain some things to him."

"Yeah. I can give Rafael a call." At Buffy's questioning look, she added, "King of the Rats."

"Right. And when the Rat Man calls you back, we can go explain to Jean-Claude how things work from now on." Buffy said with a cheerful smile.

"And on that happy note," Jamil interrupted. He conspicuously looked at his watch, then shot Buffy a sardonic look.

"Right. Right. Look, follow me around to the apartment, I want to grab a quick five minute shower and a change of clothes. Then we'll go meet the family!" She wasn't as confident about the situation as she sounded. Meeting new people had always been hit or miss with her.

The five of them wrangled their way out of the booth, Jamil dropping some money on the table to cover the tab. Several other wolves around the restaurant stood to follow them out, but there were a number of notable exceptions. Buffy realized that the exceptions had already accepted her as Ulfrana, and had no need to witness her formally taking command.

Buffy stopped the group just before opening the door. She turned to Sylvie, who was just behind her. "Do you smell that?"

The other werewolves sniffed at the air. "Can't smell anything, boss." Jamil shrugged. Sylvie and Richard also shook their head. Shang-Da shruged, but drew his pistol just in case.

Buffy put her hand on the doorknob, then pulled it back. "Doorknob's broken. I think someone's broken into my apartment." She began to pull the door open, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her. Sylvie shook her head, then pulled Buffy back toward her and Richard. Richard moved to place himself between Buffy and the door.

"Boys." Buffy's second-in-command jerked her head toward the apartment door. Now Jamil's gun was out. The black man grabbed the doorknob, looked to Shang-Da, and counted off on his fingers. _Three, two, one!_ He yanked the door open and the two men entered the room. Jamil checked his corners and entrances on one side while Shang-Da did the other. It wasn't that large an apartment; the main room, the bathroom, a kitchenette separated by a counter, and the sleeping area separated by a waist-high wall.

It was dark and shadowy. The only light was coming from the street-lamp outside. Shang-Da quietly slid over and pushed the bathroom door open with a toe while Jamil checked the kitchenette and the 'bedroom'. He shook his head at his partner, then called out. "It's clear. There's nothing here."

Sylvie and Richard stepped into the room, followed by Buffy. Buffy barely noticed Richard reach over and hit the primary lightswitch next to the door.

Chaos exploded in the apartment.

As if being yanked into the light, an empty-eyed man in ragged clothing and a small boy appeared out of nowhere. The ragged man stabbed the former Ulfric in the chest four times before anyone reacted. He shoved Richard out of his way and onto the floor and lurched toward Buffy. The boy, on the other hand, climbed Sylvie like she was a jungle-gym. Almost before she could react, the child had his legs wrapped around her chest and was pressing his thumbs into her eyes. She managed to grab the boy's wrists before he could gouge them out, but was struggling against an unbelievable strength. Unbalanced, Sylvie shrieked and fell backward and the boy rode her to the floor with practiced ease.

_**INVADER!**_

_**ASSASSIN!**_

_**WAR!**_

The entity's anger at the attack drove Buffy's own. She met the ragged man's charge. She ducked under his knife-swing and kicked him in the chest, the abdomen, the right knee, the right knee. Buffy's eyes widened at the man's reaction, or rather lack of one. Her strikes had jarred her attacker enough to make him drop the knife, but the force she used should have crushed his chest and broken his leg had he been a normal human being. Again she struck, kicking him hard in the side, the side again, the other knee, then whirling to backhand the man across the face.

He shrugged her attack off, spitting out a mouthful of black ooze while he approached. Buffy could see the man's jaw hanging oddly. Her attack had broken his jaw, clearly, but it wasn't even slowing him down.

"Out! Run! Get out!" Shang-Da, standing directly behind the ragged man, was shouting at her, but it took a moment for Buffy to register what he was saying. The entity within her was screaming in rage.

_**DESTROY!**_

_**SLAUGHTER!**_

_**REAVE!**_

But Buffy hesitated. Her Hati had his gun lined up on the man, but was holding off, she suddenly realized, because she was in his line of fire. Behind her, Sylvie _screamed_ in agony. Buffy glanced over in time to see the child leap at her, only to be tackled over the dividing wall. Her Skoll yelled "Get the hell out of here!" before she lost sight of him.

_Right. They're after me. Enclosed space. Bad place to fight. Time to go. _Buffy became a blur as she flowed out of the apartment and down the staircase to the alley.

_**NO!**_

_**TRAITOR!**_

_**COWARD!**_

_**ATTACK!**_

_SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! _Ruthlessly, Buffy shoved the presence to the back of her mind. Her people were fighting for her, against her every instinct, and Buffy hated it. But she had no idea who was attacking. Above her, she heard a pistol's report. Once, twice, three times. She stopped running and turned around. In her peripheral vision, she could see people in the restaurant's parking lot react to the sound of gunfire but her attention was on the apartment's door. There was another gunshot, and then a harsh scream of pain – a man's voice.

The two people – the ragged man and the child – they had felt odd to her. Familiar somehow. Like she should have known who they were. The taste they left in the air was like a mix of cinammon and sweat and brown sugar with the slight tinge of rot behind it. She felt, deep down inside of her, a pull toward them. Like she needed to be in their presence. The thought horrified her.

Buffy jumped in shock when Jamil came crashing through the apartment's door, his hands wrapped around the child. The pair crossed the landing and were in the air in a moment. Mid-fall, the child twisted, pulling Jamil around so that the werewolf hit the ground first. It didn't matter. Her bodyguard rolled, bringing his greater mass to bear as he slashed and punched the child over and over. They stopped, Jamil straddling the boy, and Buffy watched as her bodyguard barely avoided a stream of foul-smelling black liquid spit from the boy's mouth as like venom from a cobra.

Above her, the ragged man appeared on the landing. He was bleeding black ichor from from his mouth and his chest, but seemed barely affected by the wound. The ragged man had regained his knife and was shambling quickly down the staircase toward Buffy. She dropped into a defensive crouch as he approached, determined to put him down for good this time.

Shang-Da appeared in the doorway. Her Hati held one hand to his throat, which Buffy could see was bleeding profusely. Shang-Da slid down the doorjam, blinking heavily, then lifted his pistol. One last time, he fired. The round caught the ragged man in the back of his head, and the man's forehead exploded outward, splattering Buffy in black ooze and bone.

The ragged man took one more step, then fell face-forward on the stairs.

Jamil pulled his arm back, his hand transformed into claws. Before he could strike the child, the boy kicked the bodyguard away and rolled to his feet. The youth growled at the bodyguard, then fled, disappearing back into the shadows from which he appeared in seconds. The last thing Buffy saw before the boy disappeared was the cold, hateful eyes, staring at her from the darkness.

Jamil tried to follow the boy, but stopped after only a few steps. Then both of them turned back to the apartment. Buffy beat her Skoll to the top of the stairs. Shang-Da was still breathing, and still conscious, but it was clear from his pale complexion that he'd lost a lot of blood. He met Buffy's eyes, pleading. Buffy touched him gently in the middle of his forehead, and his form almost instantly flowed from man to wolf. Shang-Da, in his wolf-form, lowered his head to the deck and fell asleep.

Jamil was clearly shocked at the speed of his partner's transformation, but didn't say anything. He stepped past Buffy. "The other two are hurt bad."

Buffy moved toward Sylvie, who was gasping in pain as she pressed her hands to her eyes. "Kid spit that inky shit in her eyes, Ulfrana. We need to get both of them to the hospital." Buffy nodded even as the bodyguard pulled his cell phone out. Buffy stopped listening, instead repeating the blessing she gave to Shang-Da. Sylvie was in her wolf-form and instantly asleep. A moment later, so was Richard.

She looked up at Jamil, who waved his cell phone at her. "Multiple ambulances. There's three people down. Yes. No, not County General. The shifter clinic. Just get them here!"

"Who did this, Jamil? Who were they?" Buffy was shaking, enraged. "Did Jean-Claude send them?"

Jamil was quiet, but he shook his head. "This wasn't his style. He'd stab you in the heart in a second, but he'd do it while you were looking at him." He knelt next to his partner, pulling Shang-Da into his lap. "This was something else. Don't ask me what. But this was something else."

The sound of sirens was growing closer. Someone from inside the restaurant probably called the cops. That was fine. She was all about the law and order. The cops could provide cover in any case. Jamil shifted his weight, then turned to her. "There's a crowd in the alley, probably from the restaurant. Mike's down there, and whatsername... Paula. They're both wondering what the fuck is going on."

Buffy got to her feet and stepped across Jamil to address the crowd. "Stay down there. Don't mess up the crime scene anymore than we already have. Paula, when the cops get here, show them back here." The waitress nodded and Buffy immediately forgot she was there. She braced herself against the wall next to Jamil and slid down until she was sitting on her butt next to him. Unconsciously, he leaned against his shoulder for support, and she threw an arm around him.

_**COWARD!**_

_**BATTLE!**_

_Shut the fuck up! I AM IN CHARGE OF MY LIFE!_ Buffy took a deep breath. "While we're waiting for the cops and the ambulances, get on the phone." At Jamil's questioning look, she continued. "I haven't even officially met my pack, and I've got people attacking me. I need to meet them as soon as possible, to make it official. And then I need to talk to the other bosses to figure out what's going on."

"Bosses?"

Buffy did the one thing she knew werewolves tried to never do to one another. She stared at Jamil, right in the eyes, offering the challenge. In response, Jamil visibly grew goosebumps and looked away. "We almost got our asses handed to us by a boy and a homeless guy. I don't care what it takes, I want to know who they are, what they are doing, and why they were coming after me." She shook her head. "Something that cop said. The big one. He said I was Barzini to Jean-Claude's Corleone. Maybe I should start acting like it. We need to get the wolves ready. I feel a war coming."

**XxxxxxX**

_**April 30, 1969**_

_**Market Square**_

_**Helsinki, Finland**_

_A crowd of half-drunk, nearly riotous Finns had gathered around the _Havis Amanda_, a bronze statue of a nude woman placed at the center of Helsinki's Market Square. The statue was part of the celebration of Vappu, the holiday known as Walpurgisnacht in the rest of Europe. It was the last night of winter and the beginning of spring – and the last night of the year that witches could work their evil magicks on innocent people._

_Professor Sylvia Tate-Evans, a visiting scholar working with the anthropology department of the University of Helsinki, was known to her colleagues on the Inner Circle as the sorceress Astaroth, pushed through the crowd in a desperate attempt to escape her pursuer. Several yards behind her, a ragged and forlorn figure slipped easily through the crowd. He wore a tattered motley of stained clothes, old shoes, and a moth-eaten coat. On his face he wore a Scaramouche mask of paper-mache, covered in cracked and fading gold leaf. In his hand he carried a long knife._

_Arlecchino, risen in undeath to serve as Luther Black's personal assassin, moved through the crowd of drunken revelers without being noticed by any of them. No matter what hexes and curses Tate-Evans cast, even on this night when her powers were strongest, the assassin kept coming._

_One of the celebrants, a young man with more than half a bottle of apricot wine in his belly, climbed atop the pedestal on which the _Havis Amanda_ was standing and as he tugged his German alpine cap over the statue's metal head, unknowingly performing a ritual in which youth was symbolically returned and the regrowth of the world was started, Arlecchino plunged his blade into Sylvia Tate-Evans' side. The undead assassin held the woman close to him, stabbing her seven more times, finally finishing her by slitting her throat so severely that her head nearly fell away from her neck._

_Astaroth's blood was running freely into the gutter, mixing with the spilled wine, the beer, and the piss, before the crowd noticed the murdered woman in their midst. Luther Black had eliminated the first of the Inner Circle, beginning the decade-long period known to mystics as the Red Nights._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. The Sandman is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime nor stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. Literary rights to _The Godfather_ are held by the estate of Mario Puzo and his heirs, while film rights to _The Godfather _belong to Paramount Studios.

**Author's Note the Second:** Yes, I cranked out another chapter. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep this rate of creativity up (its tiring), but I will be endeavoring to continue my other stories. I've got new chapters started for both _Origin Story_ and for _At This Moment_, and have been tossing around what I want to say with the next chapter of _Vintage Season._ In addition, I had an idea for a new story that would be a _Buffy/Star Wars _cross-over, and a second new story that would be a _Buffy/West Wing _crossover, but I might not do anything with them for now.


	7. Imperfect Hosts

**Imperfect Hosts**

**XxxxxxX**

_"All things are divided into the twin forces of Order and Chaos, forever contending for dominance. Life is something that occurs in the interface; not in the writhing discord of utter chaos, nor in the flatline perfection of pure order, but somewhere in between. The imposition of order on formless chaos, the release of joyous chaos into the grey monotony of order, this is the true magic. All else is shadow._ **_– Neil Gaiman, "The Books of Magic"_**

**XxxxxxX**

_**May 8, 1973  
Tenebrous Studios  
Monte Saint-Michel, France**_

_Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, analysts working for various law enforcement agencies in the US, Canada, and Great Britain began to take notice of something going on with the so-called "__Novus Ordo Magorum et Aeternorum Ducum," one of the many ridiculous cults of mystics and magicians who claimed to have the secrets of eternal power. For the most part, the Novus Ordo had been dismissed as a club for wealthy dilettantes who wanted to indulge in the seedier side of life occasionally._

_The cult was never seen as that great a threat, and in recent years its threat level had been down-checked several times. But it was clear that something was going on among the cult's leaders. The secret infighting going on beneath the notice of law enforcement had finally become public. The FBI and its counterparts among the other governments still had no idea what was going on, but they knew something was._

_Despite Luther Black's best efforts, the Red Nights had gone public twice._

_The first time was at the studios of Tenebrous Films, when cameras managed to capture the murder of notorious film producer – some critics would call him a jumped-up pornographer – Marcel St. Luke, who served as Baal-Chanan, one of the Novus Ordo's hidden Inner Circle._

_The butchery suffered by Asteroth had alerted the various members of the Inner Circle that Luther Black was determined to kill them all, though none of them knew why. Led by the occultist Lyle Pike, some banded together and went to war against Black. Their actions prolonged the Red Nights, forcing Luther Black to wage a decade-long series of running battles against his own students and former students._

_Others went into hiding, hoping to weather the storm until it was safe to emerge again. They were all eventually found, and all died crying, begging for their lives._

_And a small few, long-deranged by the evil doings of the cult and by Black's foul influence on their soul, simply accepted the situation and awaited their death at his hands. Among these was Marcel St. Luke. The film producer foresaw his impending death as he had seen everything else in his life, as fodder for one of his horror movies._

_St. Luke immediately called off work on all other film projects being worked on by his studio and assigned his camera crews – working in eight hour shifts – to record every second of his day-to-day life. After almost a month of filming, the end finally came, and when Arlecchino shambled out of the darkness the cameras were there to record the moment. Though Black's assassin also murdered the camera crew, he left the film behind. Marcel St. Luke's acolytes took it upon themselves to edit the hundreds of hours of black-and-white footage into a three-hour film entitled _"St. Luke Entrer dans le Tenebres" _(in English, "St. Luke Enters the Darkness")._

_The movie clearly depicts St. Luke's rapid descent into paranoia and despair, depicting the filmmaker as a manic genius and visionary, but only gives barest hints at the man's involvement in the darkest of occult practices and his pact with powers beyond his control. The film ends with Arlecchino, dressed in his shabby Scaramouche, holding his bloody knife, turning to the camera and stalking closer and closer. Black's assassin seems to almost emerge from the screen to pursue the watcher, his blank, dead eyes visible under his mask, before the movie fades to black._

_Critics have called the movie everything from the ultimate culmination of the _Cinema Verite _movement, to a pedantic sensationalist fraud, to a perverted snuff film. Among fans of horror movies, it is legendary – although the original prints disappeared years ago, the film is still in circulation in the form of grainy, badly recorded and often incomplete copies. Whatever the artistic merits of _"St. Luke Entrer dans le Tenebres", _it remains one of the few concrete pieces of evidence that there was trouble among the leadership of the Norvus Ordo._

**XxxxxxX**

**October 9, 1996  
****Saint Louis, Missouri**

Demoiselle Nocturne raged.

The master had assigned them a simple task: find the interloper who stank so much of the Shining Darkness and kill it. Take the dark power it was soaked in from the interloper's cooling corpse and return it to Luther Black. No mortal creature should have been able to evade their attack. But somehow this woman did.

She – and for most purposes, 'she' works as a gendered pronounce describing Demoiselle Nocturne as any other – had dropped the appearance of a beautiful, if photo-negative human woman. She was in her natural form, lashing out at the surroundings in the abandoned building Peter and Arlecchino had invaded to hide and recuperate.

"She was protected, mother. Protected. The dogs she controlled, they got in the way. They protected her. They would not let us near her." When his mother was like this, Peter couldn't see her. Not directly. He could tell wisps and movement out of the corner of his eye, and see bare glimpses of _something_, but his eyes would slide off his mother's naked form and refuse to view it directly. His brain could not – _**would not **_– comprehend what it was seeing, and thus refused to even try.

Next to the boy, Arlecchino simply stared. He had no such problem viewing Nocturne when she – again, she works as well as any other pronoun – was like this.

"And how many of them did you kill to get to her?"

The boy glanced at Arlecchino for a moment, knowing that the dread harlequin was oblivious to anything but their master's voice. No amount of punishment from his mother would chance the shabby clown's expression, much less change his behavior. He was going to have to face the punishment himself.

"Two, mother." He swallowed. "Out of the four, who protected her, there are two who will die, I'm sure of it. We'll try again! This time, we will end her!"

"I'm sure." Demoiselle Nocturne didn't say anything more. She didn't have to. Luther Black wouldn't kill her child for failure, he would just make young Peter wish that death had been an option, and Peter knew this. He also knew that his mother would do nothing to stop it. She loved him, but there were consequences of that love. The vague, un-seeable shape collapsed and was once more the figure of his true mother, the carbon-black figure of horrible, obsessive beauty, and Peter smiled. He couldn't help himself.

"All right, Peter dear. Go to your dinner; your meat slave has worked hard to make something you like, I am sure." The – calling her a woman at this point would also be a convenience, so – the woman caressed Peter's face. "Mother is starting something on your behalf; recruiting an ally who doesn't even know she will help us, yet. But she will, when the time is right." Nocturne's gaze fell on Arlecchino. "Find the woman. Watch her. Do not strike until I tell you."

The shambling corpse merely nodded. With that acknowledgement the bright shadow surrounding Demoiselle Nocturne like a corona faded, and the hotel room returned to normal. Peter turned to look, and the woman who mistakenly thought she was Peter's mother stood there.

The meat-woman's eyes were wide and glazed over. In one hand, she held a kitchen towel, while in the other she held a plate of what looked like sliced chicken with gravy and potatoes. The woman had a growing stain where her legs joined her torso, and there was a splattering of liquid at her feet.

Peter only sighed. He took the plate from the woman and waved toward the puddle of piss. "Go and clean this mess up. Now." He turned and sat at the room's small table, not really noticing if the woman complied or not. He loved chicken with gravy and potatoes.

**XxxxxxX**

Anita Blake stood on the crest of the hill. It was perfectly silent. No sound of wind. No animal sounds. Not even the shifting of sand. The thumping of her heart – and her heart was beating as hard and as fast as it would be, were she running a marathon – was the only thing Anita could hear, and even then, it only sounded in the inner spaces of her ears. The sky was dark and churning, the color of old cigarette ash, and covered with a solid wall of clouds that seemed blacker than black. There was nothing around her for miles. Just more rock and ash. No trees, no buildings, no life of any kind. Everything was burned and desolate and harsh. Even the mountains in the distance looked like a set of blackened, rotting fangs biting into the horizon.

And throughout this landscape, liquid shadows moved in ways that defied the presence of the light. They clung to the rocks wrongly, and flittered from one to the other. Occasionally, two shadows would merge, clashing in violent release until only one, made larger by its absorption of the other shadow, moved on to its next hiding spot.

She looked down at herself, surprised to find herself completely naked. Not nude, naked. Nude was artistic. Nude was sensual. Anita would not call herself nude. Not now. No, she was naked.

Naked was defenseless.

Anita's skin stung as if wind-bitten. Her lungs burned as if the very air knew she was alien to this landscape and was trying to expunge her from the world. Her eyes ached and demanded to look at anything but what it was seeing.

"Isn't it glorious, Anita?" The voice, coming as it did in the complete silence, shocked her. Anita screamed, a loud, long, horrific scream, but like everything else she only heard it from the inside of her head. No sound emerged into the horrific wasteland she found herself in. Anita fell to the ash and scrambled backward, trying to put as much room between her and the speaker as she could. The effort grated the skin from her backside and feet and hands and she bled freely; the ash and stone was as sharp and cutting as ground glass.

Before her floated a woman, nude like herself. The woman was as gloriously beautiful as any super-model, the kind of beautiful that every young girl who was ever told she wasn't pretty enough by her peers in school wanted to be. Her skin was charcoal black, as were the "whites" of her eyes; the only color on the woman's entire body were the white of the woman's hair, her nipples, and her pupils. She was surrounded by a bright corona of absolute darkness.

"Welcome, Anita." The woman smiled, and Anita felt her bladder let go. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth sagged open. "I brought you here to show you a secret. You'll forget everything else, Anita, everything else you see here. It will be naught but a bad dream seldom remembered, but this secret, Anita. This secret you will remember." The woman pointed out onto the blasted plain. "Look, Anita. And remember."

She didn't want to. She tried not to. She tried to force her eyes closed. She tried to keep the muscles of her neck from turning her head. But nothing could stop it.

Out on the plain below the ridge, a massive shadow, easily the size of a skyscraper, or an aircraft carrier, undulated towards her. Almost at random, it would pick up the skulking shadows that she'd seen moving back and forth, absorbing them without effort. As it got closer to her, the mountainous thing seemed to notice her. Anita stood, frozen in terror, as the loathsome specter came closer, staring down as if sizing her up for a meal. As the distance between them closed, Anita's mind began assigning a shape to it. The various carnivorous dinosaurs of _Jurassic Park_ came and went, as did nearly all fur-bearing carnivores she'd ever been aware of. They all were inadequate to encompass the thing's very concept, much less its true shape.

Finally, the Anita's mind settled on the vague appearance of the monster from _Alien_, somehow crossed with a scorpion and a black widow spider and a squid. The idea nearly broke her, because at first it was still a titanic sight. But as it closed on her, it seemed to draw into itself, becoming smaller, more contained. Until finally, the shadowy mass was barely larger than she was.

The unnatural beast loomed over her for a moment, before the black shadow of its body dispersed as if it were fog. Anita goggled; with the darkness gone, all that was left was a small woman with golden hair, yellow-catlike eyes, gold stripes all over her nude form, and a mouthful of fangs. The thing disguised as a girl opened her mouth in a rictus smile and took Anita by the shoulders. It – it wasn't a girl, Anita kept telling herself. It was a thing. It sniffed at Anita and again, gave the horrible parody of a smile, all fangs and tearing teeth.

"ANITA." The thing's voice was low and deep and growling, extending each syllable of her name as if for hours. Anita again felt her bladder go. She felt her eyes involuntarily roll back in her head as her mind acknowledged her impending death. She was the rabbit, trapped by the fox, and knowing that it was about to die couldn't even move.

"ANITA" The thing's voice again sounded. "COME ON, ANITA. WAKE UP. YOU'RE BEING RELEASED. YOUR LAWYER ARRANGED FOR YOUR BAIL AND THERE'S SOME VAMPIRE HERE WAITING FOR YOU. SAYS HE'S YOUR RIDE."

Blake blinked. The nightmare landscape and the thing in the shape of the girl were gone, replaced by the ceiling of a jail cell. She clenched her eyes shut, trying to remember the details, but they were rapidly fading. Everything was growing blank. In a moment, she couldn't remember what she'd been dreaming about, only that it had been a nightmare. Something about a monster, she thought.

Anita rolled off the bunk and looked to where Larry Zebrowski stood in the open doorway of the cell. "All right. I'm coming. Give me a sec."

**XxxxxxX**

"You know, it's crazy that you're more bothered by the chance you might be late to this thing than you were to being attacked by those lunatics." Jamil's voice held a tinge of wry humor that was beginning to get under Buffy's skin. "You're the boss. The entire point of this get-together is for you to see and be seen by your pack. Nothing's going to happen until you get there."

Buffy, staring out of the window from the seat behind Jamil, who was driving, merely 'hmmm'd' in response.

_**DISAPPOINTMENT**_

The other people in the car didn't flinch this time. Buffy almost smiled at it. _Maybe they're getting used to it. I mean, I'm used to it being there in my head. Maybe they're getting used to it talking to me._

_**CONFIRMATION**_

_I don't even know what to call you. I don't even know what you are. But here are, about to pretend to be Queen of Werewolves. How am I even going to pull this off?_

_**EASILY**_

At first Buffy rolled her eyes. But then she realized that, for the first time, the thing had made a direct response to one of her questions instead of one of its usual one-word semi-answers. _Have you been able to talk to me like that this entire time? You've been giving me these vague bullshit answers for almost a century now. Have you been able to talk normal to me all this time?_

_**NEGATION**_

_**COINCIDENCE**_

_**CONTEXT**_

_**UNDERSTANDING**_

_**LIMITATIONS**_

_**CONCEPTUALIZATION**_

_**ECHOES**_

_Wait, what? You mean I'm getting these one-word answers because they're all I'm understanding of what you're try to tell me?_

_**CONFIRMATION**_

_**VASTNESS**_

_**LIMITLESS**_

_**IMPRISONED**_

_**EXASPERATION**_

_**LIMITATIONS**_

"You're gonna do fine." Jamil said for about the tenth time in as many minutes as she continued her brood. He glanced over at his partner, Shang-Da, who just shrugged. It looked to the two bodyguards like their new boss was having a conversation with herself. Something they'd noticed she did a lot. It wasn't weird, just different. Richard was the 'never miss a chance to talk someone's ear off' type. Buffy was quiet. They could deal with quiet.

Buffy just nodded. _Jesus... why am I doing this again?_

**_MINIONS_**

**_USEFUL_**

**_ARMY_**

**_ENEMIES_**

_Great. So you are encouraging me to pretend to be a werewolf just so we have an army to fight whoever is out there?_

_**CONFIRMATION**_

_Wonderful. _Buffy sighed, just loud enough for her two bodyguards to hear.

"Opening night jitters." Shang-Da broke the silence again. "Richard was the same way, you remember?" Shang-Da's comment was pitched low, but with the enhanced hearing enjoyed by werewolves, they expected Buffy could understand anything the two of them said to each other. And they were right.

"No, it's not that," she said, finally turning her attention back to the other two people in the vehicle. "Well, yeah, its partially that. But mostly I'm worried about Sylvie and Richard. Well, less Richard and more Sylvie." The pack's alpha wolves were still in the hospital. While Jamil and Shang-Da healed their wounds through shifting their form, Sylvie, who'd had some sort of poison spit into her eyes, and Richard, who'd been stabbed nearly three dozen times, were still in a bad way.

_Okay, whatever your name is..._

**_SINEYA_**

_Sineya, but that was the name of the -_

_**CONFIRMATION**_

_Sineya, e__xplain to me why I am masquerading as a werewolf, again? I mean, aren't they going to notice, come the next full moon, that I'm not getting all furry?_

_**NEGATION**_

_**CAPABLE**_

_**POWERFUL**_

_Wait... you mean I can turn into a wolf now? You mean I'm actually a werewolf now?_

**_NEGATION_**

**_SINEYA!_**

Jamil nodded at Buffy's words, agreeing with her. Buffy not being able to see him do it, but got his response anyway somehow. She was barely able to keep the two conversations separate in her head, but she managed.

"Not the best way to begin my reign as the Wolf Queen." Buffy grimaced. "Having two of my alphas taken out by a homeless guy in a clown suit and a fourth-grader."

"Yeah, that's true." Jamil gave her a quick grin, then nodded forward, toward the make-do parking lot they were entering. "All due respect and shit, Buffy, but you might want to put on the big girl panties. We're here."

**XxxxxxX**

"So, what went wrong?"

Jean-Claude's direct question, put to her as soon as she entered the vampire's office-slash-throne room under the Circus of the Damned, and made without any of his usual French-language endearments, caught Anita Blake so off her guard that for a moment, she stumbled.

She'd arrived at the Circus directly from the Saint Louis County Jail. Over the past two days, the only shower she'd been able to take was the required jailhouse shower each new internee was required to take upon induction into the jail, the one that ended by being sprayed down with a delouser. It had been humiliating. She was also in the same clothes she'd been arrested in, and thus felt grimy all over. But the driver – sent by Jean-Claude – was under orders to bring her directly to the Master of the City and wouldn't listen to her request to let her go home to change.

Anita had always assumed that her status as the Master's human servant garnered a bit of respect amongst the vampires who worked for Jean-Claude. His behavior tonight was showing her clearly that the most important word in the phrase "human servant" was "servant," no matter how cherished a pet she might be by the master vampire, the truth was she was just a pet and nothing more.

"What do you mean?" She wasn't sure how Jean-Claude meant the question. It puzzled her. She took a seat on the comfortable chaise set before the Master's desk.

"I sent you out to retrieve this new Ulfrana so that I might bring this rebellious wolf to heel as is her natural place. I sent you, my unbeatable dark warrior, and Asher, my trusty right hand. And now, this evening, not only has the Wolf-bitch not been brought to heel, but Asher has been staked and beheaded by the police, and you spent the day in jail and are now considered a drug addict." Jean-Claude came around the desk as he talked. By the time he ended his rant, he was leaning over her, raging directly into Anita's face. "So again, _ma petite_, I ask you: what went wrong?"

Anita flinched leaned back as far as she could, trying to make space between herself and the angry vampire, but there wasn't very much room to retreat to. She knew better to snap back at him when Jean-Claude was like this, to demand he back off. Jean-Claude was not generally known for his shows of force or cruelty. Because of this, many other vampires, including most of the Council, saw him as too soft and compassionate for the position he now occupied. Too weak to wield true power.

But those who lived closely with the Master of Saint Louis, those who worked and lived and loved with him every single day, knew the truth. They knew just how cruel he could be. Just how violent he could be. Belle Mort had taught her children well.

"Everything went wrong!" Anita almost screamed in his face. "She's not like Richard, or even Marcus. She's not afraid to use her power. And Jean-Claude, she's incredibly powerful. Asher couldn't stand up to her, and she was too fast for me to shoot. Neither one of us had a chance. Next time, I'll be ready for her."

"The next time?" The Master of the City snorted. "Are you so sure there will be a next time?"

"Of course, there will be. We can't let a threat like her go unanswered." While she said, 'we', Jean-Claude understood that Anita meant 'I.' One of the woman's many failings was an inability to allow anyone else to be the toughest, meanest person in the room, and Summers had pretty much proven to anyone who paid attention that when it came to being a mean, vicious bitch, Anita Blake was simply amateur hour by comparison. Anita's ego wouldn't let that go for a second.

"And you I am sure will treat her in the same manner you have treated all other possible threats to your status as the most unpleasant bitch in Saint Louis." Jean-Claude's smile wasn't very cheerful.

"What? Fuck you, you French – "

"You gave her my message, yes?" Jean-Claude interrupted, cutting off what was sure to be a world-class rant had it proceeded. The vampire stood upright and backed off, eventually returning to the far side of his desk.

"Of course, I gave her your message! What do you think started the fucking fight, Jean-Claude? I told her you "required her presence" and that we were there to take her to you. She laughed at me, Jean-Claude. She laughed at Asher." Anita shook her head. "And then she told me that if you wanted to talk to her, you could make an appointment and come by yourself. Asher tried to grab to her make her go along. Turned out that was a big mistake. She punched Asher so hard he landed thirty yards away, easy. She managed to dodge my shots, crushed my guns, and ended up calling the cops on me for kidnapping, no less."

"And that's how you ended up in a jail cell, and Asher ended up on an executioner's table. Kidnapping?" Jean-Claude didn't need to breathe unless they were doing it for effect, or unless they needed to speak. Anita knew this. So, when she watched Jean-Claude take a deep breath and let it out slowly, though his nose, without saying anything else, she knew it was for show. He was obviously pissed off.

"This pute aux puces who has cost the life of my friend and lover treats with me as if I am a jumped-up merchant and not the Master of the City!" The vampire's voice was cold and unemotional, but the man himself was shaking with rage. "Me! How dare she! Is this not my city? Are the wolves not my animal to call? And you! She has ruined your career, torn you away from your places of influence, and reduced to you a common criminal!"

Anita wasn't sure if Jean-Claude was angrier over what Summers had done to Anita personally, or for what Summers had done to Jean-Claude's plans. For a moment, the thought that it might not be her caused her to despair.

Jean-Claude walked to his desk and picked up the receiver for his phone. Jean-Claude waited a moment after tapping a quick number, then said, "C'est Jean-Claude. Mettez-les tous dans les cellules." A pause. "Tous." Another pause. "Oui, meme ma pomme du sang."

As Jean-Claude replaced the phone on its cradle, Anita cleared her through, gaining the Master's attention. For a moment, she thought to interfere. She had heard about the wolves abandoning the Circus at the order of their new leader. She had also heard that Jean-Claude had effectively held the ones that hadn't left as prisoners. Some of those werewolves were her friends, and it bothered her. _But did it bother me enough to interfere? No._

She waited until he was done to speak. "She, uh, Summers, I mean, she had something to say about you being Master of the City, too. She, uh, well, she laughed at you for that also."

"What?" The vampire was dumbstruck.

"Yeah, she said that, uh, you know… no one voted for you and you weren't elected to any office, so you have no actual legal authority in Saint Louis. She called you a mafia boss. Said something about how, since you're a legal citizen and so is she, you don't actually get to order people around against their will."

"Oh, did she, now?" Jean-Claude's eyes darkened. "I look forward to showing her precisely where she went wrong with that idea."

"What are you going to do?" Anita watched him with hope in her eyes. Her life had recently fallen apart because of what this bitch Summers did to her, and Anita was nothing if always interested in giving people who crossed her payback.

"I will deal with her. It is a simple fact that, even had she not caused Asher's death, I'd still have to deal with her harshly. I must to admit that, were I honest with myself, her overthrow of Richard and the tangle it made of my schemes truly isn't enough to remove her fully from the chessboard. I would still have to bring her to heel, but not remove her." Jean-Claude's eyes got steely. "But in her defiance, she cost the life of Asher. And I shall have my revenge.

Anita's breath caught as Jean-Claude smiled. It was a different smile from normal, not one she'd seen too often. There was no trace of the raw sex he usually exuded. Instead, it seemed he was filled with pure ice.

"She will be brought before me, I will dominate her completely, I will punish her for her arrogance, and then, when she has been punished enough, I will give her to you so that you may personally eliminate her." Jean-Claude said it as if it was an inevitability. "I will then make sure that Richard is back in place at the head of the wolf-pack, where he belongs. And then we will work to get your life back from where this interloper has left it in pieces."

Anita smiled at the thought.

**XxxxxxX**

"You still here?"

Detective Tammy Reynolds, the witch-in-residence for the Saint Louis RPIT unit, jumped at the sudden sound of the voice. The high-pitched squeal that came from her was precisely the kind of embarrassing sound that cops just weren't supposed to give forth, apparently cops intended to be the baddest of the SLPD's bad-asses.

Reynolds put a folded post-it note in place and closed the book she had been reading. "Jesus, Zebrowski! Don't do that! It's bad enough Dolph has me going through all these creep-making books, you gotta go scare me like that?"

Detective Sergeant Zebrowski – technically Reynolds superior, but the man hardly ever pressed his superior rank on _anyone_ – merely chuckled. "Sorry, Tammy. I would have thought you were out of here hours ago. I'm finally on my way out, and the only people here are night shift downstairs."

Reynolds craned her head around to look at the clock on the wall. "When the hell did it get to be 7:30?"

"You tell me. Get into something good?" Zebrowski waved a hand lazily toward the book she'd been reading.

Reynolds shuddered. "I don't think you ever want to use the word 'good' about anything about this book. The entire thing is like someone's worst nightmare. It's called the _Liber Terribilis_, and its filled with some of the scariest, sickest shit I've seen in a long time." She gave the book a shove. "It's about seven hundred years old and if my guess is right, this is an original copy."

Zebrowski whistled. "I don't think I've seen a seven-hundred-year-old book."

"Yeah, me neither. To an antique book collector, it's probably worth a couple of million dollars." She sighed and rubbed her eyes. "The scary part is - I think I'm understanding part of it, and that's terrifying."

"How so?" The senior detective whirled a chair around and straddled it backward.

"What?" Reynolds looked at him, confused.

"Why is understanding it terrifying?"

"Because…" she began. "This stuff, its stuff that no decent person should have rolling around in their head. There's a spell in here for skinning a victim alive. The spell makes sure the victim doesn't die for a couple of days after the skinning is done. There's another that turns a baby – that's a baby still in its mother's womb – into a flesh-eating zombie. Want to know how to curse someone into vampirism without first having them bitten? It's in there too. I don't need to know these things, but now I do." Reynolds wiped at her eyes. "Just knowing that this is possible… Larry, I'm taking a long weekend this weekend. I'll be spending it at my church, praying for my soul."

Zebrowski didn't know if she was serious or not. "Sure, I'll square it with Dolph."

Reynolds smiled, but it was a weak smile at best. "Good news is, I think I found out what the original owner, Whitebridge – I think I found what he was doing. Here. Look at this." She opened the book up again at where she had tucked the post-it.

"I'm not sure I want to look at that." Zebrowski chuckle was dry and only half-felt.

"No, this'll be okay. This is… you're fine. Just, look at this okay" Reynolds opened to a two-page hand-drawn picture of – of something. Zebrowski wasn't sure. It sort of looked like a mix between a naked woman, a tiger, a scorpion, that Wolverine guy from the comic books, and that acid-blooded alien from the movies, the one that laid eggs in your stomach and had two sets of jaws.

"What in the ever-loving fuck is that?" His eyes kept sliding off the picture, almost as if his brain was refusing to acknowledge its existence.

"That is Sineya, one of the so-called Kings of Edom."

"Kings of Edom, huh?"

"Yeah. Sineya here is called the Queen of Beasts. She's also called the Mistress of the Lurking Death, the Empress in Blood Red, the Hunter Who Cannot Be Denied, and the Slayer of the World. She's one of about thirty of these things, these Kings of Edom."

"Okay, so what makes the Kings of Edom so special?" Zebrowski pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and put them on.

"This is where it gets really scary." She closed the book again and held it in her lap. "According to the myths, the Kings of Edom were what ruled the universe before God began his creation. See, when the Bible says 'darkness was over the surface of the waters' its talking about these things. The Kings of Edom were what was already there when God started making the universe. The light of God's Creation drove the Kings away, to what is called the Shining Darkness, a place where the light of God never penetrates. And now, they look for ways in so they can undo all of Creation. Not because they hate God. Not because they're evil, necessarily. Just because they find the universe to be an aggravation and don't want to put up with it anymore."

"Undo all of Creation?" Zebrowski pulled his glasses off and stared at them. "You're talking about destroying the entire world?"

"The entire universe. Not just the planet Earth, but all of it. The sun, the stars, the galaxies. Everything."

"Uh-huh." Zebrowski grimaced at Reynolds. And you think that, what, back in the horse-and-buggy days, Whitebridge cast his spell and called this thing up and put it in the girl who was in the glass bubble?"

"Yeah, Sarge, I think that's what happened. And if that's true, then we are in an entire river delta of shit, because this thing isn't playing around. It's about as far from playing around as you can get. Its entire purpose, from what it says in the book, is to hunt and kill things. To destroy things. That's all it does. This thing should have started a rampage that would bring down human civilization. But where is it? Where's the apocalypse?"

Zebrowski sighed. "And here I thought I'd be getting some sleep ever again in my entire life. Okay, so these things want to kill the entire universe and it's going to start by killing everybody." He was quiet for a long while. "You're right. Why haven't we seen anything? I mean, if this boogeyman is so bad, why aren't we seeing rains of toads and rivers of blood already?"

Reynolds shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe… maybe the problem is that we keep expecting this thing to act like a demon. It's not a demon. It is really, really not a demon. Maybe the book is wrong. Maybe… maybe its abilities are limited. Maybe we're thinking black and white, and this thing thinks blue and orange. I have no idea and too many questions."

"Okay, put aside the questions for a moment. So, what is it, then? And if you say it's a god, I'm denying you coffee privileges."

But Reynolds was already shaking her head. "No, it's something completely new and unheard of. We've never dealt with anything like this before. We're not going to know how to handle it when the time comes."

XxxxxxX

The crowd had parted as Buffy approached the chair-shaped stone that sat at the center of the pack's lupanar. She couldn't take her eyes from it; staring at the throne was easier than meeting the eyes of any of the strangers who were now going to look toward her for leadership. Not to mention the ones who were about to look at her and thing that they could take her. And Buffy had been repeatedly warned by Jamil that there were some who had already started talking about the plans they had for when they were Ulfric.

_I still can't believe they named the tribe after the stupid chair._

_**AMUSEMENT**_

The crowd seemed to take a deep collective breath as the presence sounded in the back of her head.

Buffy mounted the rough steps leading to the seat of the chair, then turned to face the crowd. She'd been nervous about doing this, but – as the Doors had always said – the time to hesitate was through. Here was the time for her to announce, formally, her defeat of both Richard and Sylvie, for her to claim leadership of the pack, and for challenges against her rule to play out, and when all that was done, for the acknowledgement of the pack from the Ulfrana and their place in the hierarchy of the wolf. Not all the pack's wolves lived in the Saint Louis area, after all; some were from as far away as Steelville and Hermann.

The gathering wasn't a Hunt. There was no full moon. But the sense of urgency and the undercurrent of excitement was just as tangible as if there had been. Jamil and Shang-Da took their places at the foot of the throne, while the pack's other Alphas arranged themselves according to their position of dominance. The two holes in the rough formation left by Richard and Sylvie absences were glaring.

_Here goes nothing. Wish me luck._

_**CONFIDENCE**_

_**ASSURANCE**_

_**RULE!**_

_Thanks. I appreciate the pep talk._

Buffy took a deep breath, then addressed the crowd. "Wolves of Thronos Rokke! Hi there! I'm Buffy!" She gave the crowd a quick wave and a smile. She could hear Jamil groaning. _Oh right… take it seriously._

She took a deep breath and stood up straight. "Having defeated the previous Ulfric, Richard Zeeman, in single combat, I, Buffy Summers, claim leadership of the pack and the position of Ulfrana!" Without turning her back on the crowd, she sat on the throne. Despite the gathering darkness, the stone still carried the warmth from being out in the sun all day, and Buffy found it a remarkably comfortable seat.

Her announcement caused a great deal of muttering and whispering. She allowed a bit of the presence to leak out as a pulse; it immediately quieted the crowd. "So… is this going to be a problem for anyone? I mean, does anyone wish to challenge their new Ulfrana for leadership of the pack? If so, I'm right here!" Buffy glanced around, almost daring someone to be the first to step forward. A pause between each question had the assembled wolf pack looking to one another. It was unheard of for a new pack leader to go unchallenged by anyone, and the fact that Buffy was as small and frail-looking as she did…

"Where is Richard? And where's Sylvie?" The question came from somewhere in the depths of the crowd. Buffy had been expecting it.

"The two were injured during an attack earlier today at the Lunatic Café. They're still recovering, but the doctor said they will be fine. It's just taking longer than normal." Buffy had finally located the speaker. She was a tall, chesty blonde standing among a crowd of other female Alphas. Most of the others around her seemed either resigned or confused. This woman just seemed pissed off.

"Paris," Jamil muttered. Given the susurrus of the crowd, the assembled wolves would have missed his naming her even with their enhanced hearing. But Buffy heard her just fine.

"And you think you can just march in and take over? Some outsider? _I WAS GOING TO BE LUPA! LUPA! AND YOU FUCKED THAT UP FOR ME!_" The woman – Paris, if Buffy was understanding Jamil's comment correctly – approached the throne, first slowly, and then at a full tilt run. At the foot of the flattened stone upon which the chair sat, Paris leapt. The woman began to transform in mid-air. Paris's hands became claws and her snout extended. In a single blur of motion, Buffy stood from the chair quickly, ducked under the woman, and grabbed her challenger by one ankle with both hands.

As if standing at home plate and swinging for the bleachers, Buffy brought Paris around in an arc that ended with the larger woman's head cracking open like a melon against the body of the throne rock itself. Jamil had gone on at length at how most challenges for rulership were to the death, and how Buffy had violated tradition by leaving both Richard and Sylvie alive. But – and he was quite clear about this – she had also established a precedent that it didn't have to happen.

So tonight, whether the challengers died or not was up to her.

If Buffy hadn't been attacked in her own home, if Richard was not still in the emergency room, if Sylvie wasn't still trying to recover from being poisoned, she'd likely have left this Paris woman alive. Battered, sure. A few broken bones, absolutely. But alive.

Not this time.

Paris's skull struck the throne with enough force to shatter it like a watermelon dropped from the top of a skyscraper. Buffy stared down at the red mess dripping from her throne; she wasn't even breathing hard; the fight had been over so quickly.

_**EFFICIENT**_

_**APPROVAL.**_

Without a word, Buffy turned to the crowd. "Anyone else?" No one stood forward. "No?" Still, only silence met her cry. After a moment, Buffy turned to Jamil and shrugged toward Paris's rapidly cooling corpse. "Get this cleaned up. Do we have a graveyard on our land? Some place we can bury her out here? She was lukoi, pack. She should be honored like it."

"Sure, Buffy." Jamil looked to Shang-Da, who shrugged in response. "We'll take care of it. I don't think we have any sort of burial ground out here…"

"Then start one." Buffy turned back to the crowd. "Now that the challenges are finished, does anyone want to talk to me? About anything? Any issues, any questions, anything?"

As her Skoll and Hati moved to clear the throne of Paris's remains, a bearded man in flannel and blue-jeans called at her. "I heard you didn't kill Richard or Sylvie, and they both challenged you. You gave them a chance to surrender. But you down-right slaughtered Paris with no chance of reprieve. So, uh…" The unasked question hung in the air.

Buffy looked the man up and down. "What's your name, lukoi?"

"Uh…" The man glanced around him, obviously looking for support among his fellow wolves. He wasn't finding any. "I'm, uh, Bob. Bob Kroebener. Uh, nice to, um, meet you."

Buffy didn't smile. "Nice to be met, Bob." She stepped down from the throne and into crowd. She kept her voice loud, though, so everyone could hear her. "I don't like unnecessary violence. I don't. If I don't have to kill someone, I'm not going to because there's just no need for it. That's why Richard and Sylvie are both alive; they fought me, they surrendered, so it's over. I don't like people who hurt other people just because they can. I hate bullies, I hate mean people, and I hate pushy people, and I won't put up with any of them. But I don't have to kill them when a beating gets the job done."

"That said, tonight, before I came to the lupanar, I was attacked. I have no idea who they were, but they put two of this pack's strongest Alphas in the emergency room. Sylvie's been poisoned, and Richard was gutted like a fish. The attackers were a creepy kid and an even creepier homeless clown guy. Even being lycanthropes, these two could disable Sylvie and Richard, and nearly did the same to Shang-Da and Jamil. Night before that, I was attacked by a guy I've since learned was the Number Two vampire in the city, as well as the local vampire executioner. So, if you think I might be a little tense, you're right." She stopped in front of Bob Kroebener and crossed her arms just under her breasts. "I think we might be at war with someone, and I don't know who, but I know this is no time for anyone to be doubting I'm in charge. I killed Paris because I want everyone one of you to know I am in charge and that now is no time to fuck around. Okay, Bob?"

"Yeah, sure! Okay!" Kroebener stepped back from her, as did all the wolves around him. Buffy sighed and pulled in the forcefulness of her personality.

"So, any more questions?" Buffy smiled at the crowd, but it was the smile she used right before she'd launch into a half-dozen soon-to-be-staked vampires. The predator's smile.

A voice came out of the crowd. "What are going to do about the Master of the City? He wouldn't let Janine come home!"

"Yeah, and how about Blake? Are you going to kill her? She's supposed to be your Bolverk, but if she attacked you…" Another voice called.

"Bolverk." Buffy turned to Jamil. "Bolverk's are like court-executioners, right? Personal enforcer to the king or queen?" The black man just nodded to her.

"Right." Buffy turned back to the crowd. "I'm not going to need any Bolverk. If I need to take someone down as punishment, I'm going to do it myself. If I have the balls to order someone executed, I damned well should have the balls to handle it myself." There was a lot more muttering and more than a few nodding heads at this announcement.

Buffy stepped back up to the throne and sat down. It was beginning to cool as it got darker. "As far as Anita Blake, she's uh… she's kicked out of the pack."

"Rogue." Jamil muttered quietly, and Buffy smiled and repeated him, loudly enough for the crowd to hear.

"Thing is, she's human, or near enough to it to count as one. I don't want anyone hunting her down!" She had to raise her voice again. "She's not a wolf, so punishing her is not up to us. It's up to the cops."

"That's not how the tradition— "Someone began to respond.

"And I don't care! We are one big happy law-abiding family, remember? Just because we are wolves doesn't mean we're not going to be nice, tax-paying citizens. She's not a wolf, so she's – "The crowd began objecting. "No! Let her hide behind her vampire. She's no longer welcome out here with the wolves. Don't -"

There were a series of shouts from the crowd, calling for various things to be done to Anita Blake. "LISTEN TO ME, DAMN IT! Don't go after her! DON'T! If she's just trying to talk to you, then talk, or not, up to you. If she's attacking you, defend yourself. If she messes with you, like, I don't know, interferes with you at work or follows you home or tries to bully you into doing something she doesn't want to do, call the cops and then call me. But do not attack her! Don't do it! Just leave her be."

"But…" One of the Alphas, a tall, lanky red-headed man who looked like he'd be more at home in a granola commercial than in a wolf pack, stepped forward. "I mean, it's your call, but you want us to involve the cops?"

"Sure." Buffy gave the man her brightest smile. "Like I said, we're all law-abiding citizens, right? We want to show them that we're not monsters, right? We're just folks." There were nods across the crowd of werewolves, though she could see that some of them were still having a problem with it. _Oh well,_ Buffy thought to herself. _I'll bust some heads until they listen to me._

"Now… what was this about the Master of the City not letting someone go home?"

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 10, 1981  
CIA Field Office, US Embassy  
Lagos, Nigeria**_

_The second time the Red Nights went public was, in fact, the last of them_

_By late 1981, Aganju Lambo, the man known called Asmodeus by the members of the Novus Ordo's inner circle, was the last member of the order's Inner Circle left alive. He had run to ground in Lagos, and had taken sanctuary with his fellow Yoruba tribesmen. His own magic, coupled with that of the Yoruba shamans, protected him from mystic attack. The spirits of his ancestors protected him from all divinations. Despite this, all omens and portents predicted that he would still die, painfully and horribly, at the hands of Luther Black. Desperate to avoid this fate and defy the omens, Lambo made the CIA an offer._

_Working through intermediaries, Lambo offered to turn himself in and give the Americans as much information about the Novus Ordo and its true goals and means. In return, he asked for immunity from prosecution and protection – both physical and mystical – from reprisals. Immunity was the sticking point. Over its history, the Novus Ordo had caused many deaths, and not just the victims' families but in some cases the governments of other countries were seeking vengeance._

_The two parties went back and forth for over a week before Lambo gave in and agreed to all the CIA's terms. He had only one demand of his own from which he refused to deviate: four agents of the CIA, named by Lambo specifically, would act as his bodyguards. Only those individuals, he claimed, had the necessary skill and ability to protect him from his enemies. The CIA performed new and extensive background checks on these agents, but found nothing out of the ordinary. They agreed to Lambo's terms, and assembled the agents in Lagos. Americans Lyle Fowler, Elmer Butler, and John Stanley were joined by the Israeli-born Avagail Shafir at the US embassy building._

_Later reviews of the incident identified four areas in which the agent-in-charge and the men working for him committed fatal errors. First, he should have required Lambo to enter the field office on his own instead of in the company of an entourage. Second, the on-duty staff should have noticed the increased presence of Nigerian National Militiamen in the streets outside of the embassy. Third, he should have suspected the presence of an unauthorized repair crew a week earlier as being part of a long-term attack plan. And fourth, he should have had a member of Project Hermes, the CIA's task force dealing with mystic and arcane, present in the embassy given the known nature of the Novus Ordo._

_But by then it was too late._

_Luther Black had already gotten to Aganju Lambo, had spiritually gutted the man, and was manipulating his now-soulless body as if it was a marionette._

_Learning of the negotiations, he decided to make use of the CIA and their resources. The week before, several members of the cult, posting as electricians, had sabotaged the embassy's air-conditioning system so it would spew a hallucinogenic powder into the air. More cult members infiltrated the street outside the embassy disguised as members of the Nigerian National Militia. Black himself arrived in the company of Aganju Lambo, disguised as the man's lawyer, and since Black was blind, another cult member acted as his "legal assistant"._

_And finally, lurking in the shadows, was Arlecchino._

_The cultists managed to take over the building with minimal violence, and with no word of what was happening escaping to the outside world. On a makeshift altar set up in the ambassador's office, Luther Black sacrificed agents Fowler, Butler, Stanley, and Shafir to the Imhullu, the demons known to the Babylonians as "the whirlwind, the hurricane, the wind of four, and the wind of seven."_

_The demons swirled around the agency, killed everything in their path, be it cultists or captured embassy personnel. Luther Black overcame the power of the demons, and ripped it from them, opening a portal to the Shining Dark and calling forth a spirit from that dark plane. The entity was unceremoniously forced into the body of Avagail Shafir, where it boiled and raged until Black conquered it._

_Luther Black named this being Demoiselle Nocturne, and bound it to his will._

_With Nocturne in tow, Luther Black departed the area. He left behind a gruesome scene out of the worst of nightmares: a high heap of mutilated people, their bodies cut to ribbons and drained of all blood, not to mention the desiccated corpse of Aganju Lambo._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. The Sandman is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime nor stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author.

**Author's Note the Second:** Normally, I'd be trying to concentrate on getting _Origin Story_ finished, but I hit a wall with the next chapter. For whatever reason, I can't get a decent word flow. But I was sitting there trying to get some juice going and a scene popped into my head. Problem is, it was a scene for this story – specifically it was the bit where Demoiselle Nocturne shows Anita Blake the Shining Darkness. So instead of _Origin Story, _I decided to write for this story, and an entire chapter popped out. Funny how that works.

**Author's Note the Third:** I want to again apologize to my constant readers who have been very, very patient with me about the slow rate of new chapters. Unfortunately, my health has only become worse. On top of recovering from the accident, I suffered a stroke recently, with all the problems attendant with having a blood vessel in your brain explode. And yes, it turned out the stroke was connected to injuries I suffered in the accident. If it's not one thing, it's another. Anyway, enjoy the new chapter.


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